A Matter of Trust
by SofiaDragon
Summary: Johnlock A/B/O Sherlock is about to finish his degree and is honestly trying to give up the cocaine when a one night stand gets a bit too rough. Mycroft gets a little overprotective, but an RAMC Lieutenant helps set things right. Fluff and cuddling.
1. The State of the World

A/N: **This is an A/B/O story.** That means Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics with all the altered biology and such that go along with this science-fiction setting. This first chapter is the worldbuilding that should fill you in if you have never read an A/B/O story, as well as laying down the rules for how it all works in my version of the trope. This started out as the crakiest of crack fics, but then I did what I always do and made it meaty and full of plot.

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A Matter of Trust

**The State of the World**

The United Kingdom, like much of the world, had a population problem. The mutation in genetics that created Alphas and Omegas was the result of a fungus unleashed by prospectors mining for gold that swept across the world nearly a thousand years ago. It spread like wildfire throughout many species, reprogramming them so that they would spread the virus more readily. Being a sexually transmitted disease, one would think that the fungus would cause a boom in population as it persuaded it's hosts to spread it around, but the enzymes it produced were only recently understood as a sort of genetic engineering and had unpredictable effects on the next generation. It had developed to infect the life forms of the caves it was native to, but out in the greater world the repercussions were dire, uncontrolled, and random in the beginning. The worst damage occurred in the first couple decades, and the part of Asia it first infected lost many species entirely. The fungus could not live without a host, and so those of its number not compatible with surface life died out within one human generation. The silk road carried the more mammal and avian friendly strains west. Migrations of birds carried it to the rest of Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. There was still heated debate about how it reached the Americas, with some people vehemently asserting that it was introduced to many native populations along with smallpox during European colonization despite the plentiful evidence that the native peoples there had already been infected by a strain that was quite tame, though still managed the transformation of sex and gender that the original successful strains did. A good portion of each generation died before the advent of penicillin and modern standards of hygiene all but eradicated the human-adapted fungus outside of laboratory samples. Occasional cross-species infections occurred, but were quickly contained. Livestock benefited from human medication and anti-fungal compounds had been used liberally, though with much complaint by environmentalists, on large swaths of countryside to control the fungus in local wildlife. However, the genetic manipulation it caused remained in the population without cure.

The fungus, thanks to ancient Romans not understanding science properly, had been dubbed Iovis Judicii Scriptor: Jupiter's Judgment. Somehow, that name had entered the English vernacular in the bastardized "Judicious Schism" as a formal term used by academics, and shortened to The Schism in less formal speech. Now that the fungus was eradicated the mutations were stabilizing. Over the last hundred years the incidents of horrifically deformed stillbirths had diminished from unfortunately common to extremely rare. The development of birth control freed the pleasure of sex from the responsibility of a child, which allowed some of the libido-enhancing effects of the fungus to be dealt with outside of marriage, but the birth rate of viable and fertile offspring in several species including humans had been an issue for generations.

The most successful strains created a system of dual genders in the children of its carriers. While a person or animal might be outwardly male or female as had always been true, they would now also be Alpha, Omega, or Beta. Betas were physiologically identical to the old genders, but beta males were not very fertile and beta females statistically would only produce two children before dying in a third attempt. With more recent advances in modern medicine and gender equality, beta women generally chose sterilization after their first child was born if they chose to have children at all - often as part of a medically necessary c-section procedure. Betas were considered organizers and servants for many generations, though many beta men kept inherited positions of political power.

Alpha's where more masculine than betas no matter their primary gender. Alpha women were almost always sterile, but as strong both in body and will as the Amazons of myth. They were the first of the 'new genders' to change their roll in society, bullying their way into military and political leadership roles to fill the gaps left by the 'loss' of two thirds of the men to so-called softer secondary genders. Alpha males were, initially, considered animalistic or possessed by demons in the Asia and the Middle East. They would enter an aggressive haze when provoked by anger or the allure of a potential mate, but this could be controlled with personal discipline to a certain extent. Either the alpha mutation had mellowed over a few generations or understanding of this new breed of men developed enough that by the 1500's most societies considered alphas to be the manliest and best of men. They were still treated with caution, kept on leashes by some backwards cultures when their Omegas were close to a heat like guard dogs expected to lash out at innocent passers by, but Alpha women had similar instincts and hormonal fluctuations when exposed to certain pheromones or situations. In most modern societies alphas of both types had claimed the roles that men held pre-schism. There were a few mutations allowing alpha women to impregnate their bonded omegas, though that was a very rare thing in England.

Omegas were the breeders, and bore all the responsibility for the population crisis. They were as a rule highly fertile and possessed the ability to recover quickly from great physical harm, including wounds what would kill a member of another gender class. Some could even retain semen for up to two years, producing two pregnancies from a single encounter or even conceive after they had been widowed, though counter to what was depicted in popular fiction that process was completely involuntary and rather rare. During estrus, omegas produced powerful pheromones and entered an altered state of consciousness similar to intoxication referred to in the common vernacular as a 'heat.' This enticed alphas, could even cause riots if handled poorly in a public setting. Omega women carried on much as women always had, though as modern society marched forward omega men were left a bit behind by the more progressive developments. Males only produced a single ovum seasonally while females produced on or two monthly. Maternal twins were conceived in roughly half of female omega pregnancies. Female omegas only went into heat seasonally, the same as males, so with a bit of planning a woman could avoid heats for years by getting pregnant before her first post-childbirth heat. Some women preferred that lifestyle, others hated it. Some omega males retained the ability to father children, but it was rare they had the chance.

While arranged marriages were not the norm in the United Kingdom as they were in Eastern Asia and it was also free of the registries some Socialist counties had instituted to match Omegas with mates as young as possible, the capitalist societies highly encouraged their breeders to do the patriotic thing and pop out a new generation in a number of ways. Everything from the tax penalty Sherlock paid as a single omega to the stack of junk mail advertising matchmaking services that piled up every week was pushing him to find an alpha or fertile beta male and produce a litter of children.

Alphas and omegas were capable of bonding, which made it less dangerous for an omega near a heat to be out in public by lessening the pheromone output of the omega and attuning those pheromones to the specific alpha so that other alphas were less likely to try and take the omega as their own. For the alpha, a bond dulled the impact of 'strange' omega pheromones and encouraged the more positive instincts and mellowed their tempers. It did not guarantee fidelity on either side, though the omega's body adjusted over the first year of bonding to 'fit' the alpha, to use the least offensive terminology, so long as they were faithful. This helped ensure conception and could make congress with alphas of significantly different size or shape uncomfortable. As there was significant variation to the alpha's external physiology due to the diversity of mutation across the globe - some with knots, a variety of proportions and shapes, even what could only be described as tentacles among some ethnic groups - that was a fairly necessary process to ensure physical compatibility after a love based match. Despite these facts, the general public misinterpreted alpha-omega bonding as an unbreakable perfect union, with far more than just a few physical alterations to the omega's vaginal passage and a slight alteration in how the alpha's brain chemistry responded to certain pheromones and triggers occurring during the bonding period. Bonding was triggered by pressure on the glands at the base of the omega's neck during heat, not necessarily a bite and certainly not requiring broken skin, but that was often the method used. A bonding scar was considered a mark of passion rather than barbarism by most of the public. As long as the glands remained undamaged, an omega could bond multiple times throughout their lives, though there was some controversy over if the new bond replaced the old one fully or not. There were little dances of courtship in every culture, but it was always some variation of the same theme. Alphas had a duty to provide, protect, and supply while the omegas would shelter, heal, and make.

Rape of an un-bonded omega who entered a heat in public was not heavily prosecuted, as what else could be expected if one was to put themselves in such a vulnerable position knowingly? While the base chemical component of bonding can occur unwillingly, a proper bond required the consent of a willing omega or the cascade of hormones would fizzle out after a month into nothing, prompting a miscarriage if the forced bonding accompanied a conception. A small mercy for the hapless omega who failed to prepare for their heat. An un-bonded omega causing a riot by going into heat in a crowded area was liable for up to 60% of the damage caused by all participants. Alphas entering a destructive haze caused by anger rather than sexual desire were likewise responsible for any damage caused by provoking a haze in other alphas or a protective frenzy in any nearby omegas. It was not murder for an omega to defend their children with deadly force, even from verbal threats, nor were they liable for anything they did while defending their nesting area from unwanted intrusion during the lead-up to or for the duration of a heat. Criminals often took advantage of these laws, and some of the more interesting crimes Sherlock had read about involved the manipulation of events to make it seem like cold-blooded actions were actually understandable moments of passion.


	2. The State of Sherlock Holmes

Omega men were men - they were not just women with flat chests - but Sherlock ran time and again into people who expected him to act effeminately and thought his worth was only found in his womb. In fact, while omega and beta women had been gaining more freedom and independence over the last few decades, the supposedly more fragile male omegas were still kept sheltered for their own good by most well-to-do families, though of course the lower classes had always been more practical about such things. His own family constantly harassed him, attempting to persuade him to find an alpha to 'protect' him and 'get his life properly structured.' He was a twenty-one year old adult, he did not need a babysitter to shield him from life's harsh realities. He wanted to use his skills to become a proper private detective, being exposed to the underbelly of society was part of the package. The fact that he was in this fourth year of study at university and had not even settled down in a committed relationship was often met with a whispered inquiry about his health. It was also expected that something must be wrong with him since he never sought out a partner even during his heats.

Sherlock took suppressants to stop his heats from becoming debilitating, which was highly frowned upon for a young omega with no medical need for them. They dulled his natural scent to roughly a quarter of its normal intensity, which made people passing by him in public either assume he was a beta or that he was recently bonded and his scent glands were still adapting depending on how much they were paying attention and how close they got to him. He still needed to sequester himself for a day or two four times a year, and those days were filled with a deep loneliness. He had no interest in acquiring an alpha who would immediately start trying to run his life for him or complain endlessly about an omega being allowed into any field of study involving cadavers. Three years ago he had tried a compound that was designed to eliminate his heats entirely. Six months later he was found high as a kite in an alleyway after steadily increasing his dosage of the pleasurable opiate derivative as the daily dose had always left him craving more a few hours later. Mycroft shipped him off to a rehab center to suffer through horrific withdrawal that left him nearly psychotic for a period of weeks between the cravings, a hyper-emotional state, and a couple full-strength heats only a month apart without any comfort or satisfaction.

He'd missed a year's worth of classes over the fallout, but he had started at Cambridge at age 16 so it wasn't too much of a setback to transfer to Oxford where he was completely unknown and would not be approached by his former dealer. His absence was explained to all who cared to ask as a 'gap year traveling the continent' thanks to some intervention by Mycroft and their parents. He was still addicted to opiates after a fashion, not that he let Mycroft or Mummy catch wind of that, though his cocaine intake was much easier to regulate than the much more potent drug he'd foolishly been tricked into taking. So long as he kept himself busy he didn't need it at all outside of his heats, and he only allowed himself to have two doses in his possession at a time. It let him lay back and relax through the heat without having to acquire a mate, but it was still less than ideal. His research indicated that the cravings never completely went away for opiate addicts, and the longer he used it the worse they would become, so he was still looking for better long term solutions even though things were perfectly well in hand currently.

The military held a possible solution to Sherlock's problems. The idea had physically bumped into him in the early part of 2001, taking the form of a harassed looking Omega looking for the Freak of Oxford. Sherlock had very nearly dismissed the emotional woman over the insulting moniker, but her apologetic babbling over not watching where she was going rapidly informed him that she didn't know Sherlock's actual name and had only heard a couple rumors about him. She was hoping to find him based on a friend of hers that said he could be found in the laboratories of this building during the freshman dance and music classes. He introduced himself as Sherlock Holmes, a student of Organic Chemistry and Forensic Biology who worked part time solving puzzles for people and sternly dissuaded her from ever using that title to refer to him again. There was an expected, but much more polite than usual, commentary about how out of the ordinary it was for an omega to be studying Forensics. Ms. Walker finally introduced herself as a freshman technically enrolled as a Literature Major while deciding if she should go into Early Childhood Education or Child Psychology, because of course she was going to work with children. At least the woman was clearly in favor of more progressive ideas about gender equality despite being a walking embodiment of the omega stereotype. Even her problem seemed utterly mundane, typical, and painfully boring.

Ms. Walker was worried that the Alpha courting her was cheating, which was painfully obvious from the condition of her shirt sleeves. It was good for her that she could speak more words per minute than the average auctioneer and too distressed to realize that he hadn't intended for her to start trailing after him when he turned and walked away. The behavior she described was bizarre enough to pique his interest, and the explanation he got out of the Alpha blazed into Sherlock's brain like a light shining down from heaven into the pits of hell. Ms. Walker's supposed suitor was shipping out for service overseas soon and did not wish to bond at all. He was simply home on leave and met her after being stood up by an omega who had signed up for a patriotic sounding program to give back to alphas in uniform. He'd actually mistaken her for the omega he was supposed to meet, as she had been wearing a blue ribbon in her hair and that had been how he'd been told to identify his date. The program matched single omegas who were not focused on finding a lifelong mate due to other obligations with soldiers who would be out of town quickly enough to shake off any pheromone-induced attachment. There was a lot of window dressing about finding a long term relationship this way, and the official paperwork all indicated that it was a way for soldiers to find their perfect match, but the alpha explained to Sherlock that in practicality it was just omegas getting what they needed no strings attached from soldiers who were going back into combat zones and couldn't or didn't want to make any promises.

Sherlock pumped the alpha for details for three hours, signing up before bothering to leave the man's flat. It didn't hurt that the images on the website and keepsake photos on display in the alpha's one room flat were all of men in uniform looking absolutely edible. Sherlock had to admit to himself that he'd found something about an alpha that grabbed his attention properly outside of a heat and wondered if he had deleted his attraction to men in uniform for some reason. It seemed ridiculous that he didn't already know that about himself, but then he'd been ignoring and habitually deleting anything to do with his own sexuality since he'd had his first heat. The alpha was either suspicious or observant enough to look at what website was displayed on Sherlock's top of the line, but still annoyingly slow, cellular phone while he typed furiously on it. He could not wait for this technology to be perfected, the clunky thing needed the battery swapped after only three or four hours of use and required an inordinate amount of fiddling, but his budding profession as a private detective made it a very necessary piece of equipment.

"Blimey, you had me sweating through this inquisition," the man laughed loudly in relief. "You could have said you only wanted to know for yourself."

"That I am interested in trying the service for myself doesn't change that I was also hired by Ms. Walker to investigate your intentions, nor does it alter my intentions to tell her the truth."

"Honestly, I'd rather you do it," he sighed. "I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to let her down. She's sweet and all, really sweet and hard to pass up, but I'm trying to work my way into a command position soon and being stuck somewhere safely away from combat for a couple tours on bond establishment restriction would kill my momentum and kneecap my entire career. Just, if she's still thinking about me in a couple years she can drop me a letter. If I make it into officer school we could make another go of it while I'm going through the training."

"I highly doubt Ms. Walker is willing to wait more than two years to begin her family. She seems eager for motherhood," Sherlock said as he turned to leave. "Be more explicit with the other omegas on your list."


	3. A Disastrous Incident

**A Disasterous Incident**

Sherlock was contacted a week later with a request for a full blood panel asserting that he was clean of any communicable diseases and on some form of contraceptive. An hour after leaving a clinic with the necessary paperwork his brother called. He didn't answer, but the voice-mail message conveyed Mycroft's disapproval of Sherlock loaning out his body like a common whore and contained several insinuations that Sherlock was not prepared for the consequences of his actions when he checked it later that evening. He took a dose of cocaine after several hours trying to get the word whore to stop floating around his head and was oblivious to everything until morning. Mycroft started sending him brochures for omega coming-out retreats. The spas were designed for omegas who were first presenting and staffed with alphas whose job it was to help teenagers through their first heats, allowing them some measure of comfort and instruction while remaining technically virginal. He was fairly certain he was well above the maximum allowed age for such a service, so anyone willing to admit him would have to be paid off to bend the rules and possibly even break the legal regulations that governed such establishments. Sherlock burned them without giving them more than a cursory glance. There were more local services that offered similar services to older, single omegas, but the ones Sherlock had looked into using had lobbies layered with a heavy floral scent which made him feel uneasy. Mycroft could have made himself useful by finding one of those that didn't stink like a nose-deaf old woman's sitting room.

When his next heat approached Sherlock met a mountain of a soldier at a cafe. He was dull, aggressively sexist, and only in the program because he couldn't pick up dates any other way. Sherlock made it clear that he was focused on his studies and his fledgling business with plans to seek a doctorate part-time after he finished his current double major and had no intention of their arrangement developing into a relationship. The man said that that was just typical new-age progressive twaddle and assured Sherlock that he'd change his mind after he'd been properly bred. Still, he was fit enough, not overly put off by Sherlock's personality, and the huge man's personality wouldn't matter a bit to his biology during a heat. They agreed to meet at Sherlock's flat in two day's time since the man seemed to accept that this was a one time arrangement. It was just posturing to sooth his wounded ego over being constantly turned down by omegas in bars. It was the first time Sherlock had shared a heat with anyone. He double-checked that he'd properly taken his oral contraceptives all week. On the day his heat started he put a locked collar on his neck to ensure the soldier wouldn't try to bond him, a fairly standard if medieval piece of hardware for this sort of casual encounter.

It was horrific. The alpha didn't survive his injuries.

He greeted the man at the door fully and formally dressed including a leather coat over his blazer and a thick scarf even though it was the beginning of summer, the extra layers of clothing a concession to nerves. When Sherlock took off his scarf and exposed the thick leather the soldier lost his temper and tried to rip it off him. By that point Sherlock had already gotten far enough into the early stages of his heat that he couldn't leave his flat safely. When Sherlock tried to phone his brother for help after the argument got nasty and it was clear the alpha wouldn't leave the brute threw the cell phone out the window. The alpha hadn't managed to actually penetrate Sherlock because his body had so thoroughly rejected the man's advances that the energy of his heat was poured into his fight or flight response instead of being commanded by his reproductive organs. He'd beaten the man bloody. A team of four betas rushed the flat and carted the man off after whoever Mycroft had checking on Sherlock reported the broken window. The stink of distressed omega in heat clung to the man enough even after being cleaned up by paramedics that when he was chucked into a holding cell the other prisoners took offense at being penned in with what smelled like a rapist. Sherlock could not discern exactly what happened from the blurry security camera footage alone when he managed to force his way into reviewing it. It all looked rather calm with the soldier dozing on a cot thanks to a high dose of pain medication and the other prisoners milling around occasionally shouting complaints about the stench. The report said he bled out after some of his stitches were reopened. Sherlock privately wondered if Mycroft had anything to do with it. He was ridiculously overprotective for a beta.

Mycroft later informed him that the man hadn't been in the military at the time of their meeting. A recent dishonorable discharge due to poor conduct and repeated insubordination, the signs of which Sherlock misread as part of the alpha's frustration over his difficulty landing a real date. He had not yet been removed from the roster at the hookup company. He'd passed the initial background check and screening, but all they required going forward was regular blood work. Grudgingly, Sherlock allowed his elder brother to set him up with a professional that could help get Sherlock past the trauma and back on the suppressants safely. The brutal yanking at Sherlock's collar had put enough pressure on his bonding glands to mess with his internal chemistry. His hormones were wildly out of balance, his body illogically see-sawing back and fourth between extremes of hormone production and wreaking havoc on all of his body's systems. He was put on a fertility treatment to try to even out the swings, and he hated how strong it made his scent. The standard treatment for this type of hormonal imbalance in omegas was therapeutic sex, and it was scheduled for Sherlock's next heat with an alpha who could not get him pregnant since the oral contraceptives he'd been taking now made him vomit four days out of five.

That heat went almost as poorly. The female alpha was let into his flat by Mycroft or his lackeys while he was in class and had proceeded to clean his two-room flat and 'make it more romantic' with horrible scented oils on the table and lacy pillows that smelled strongly of her feminine alpha musk all over his bed while she waited for him. Sherlock spent the hours of pre-heat demanding his collar be returned to him, trying to get his other possessions laid out where they belonged, and attempting to get rid of the perfumed oil that was threatening to make him nose blind with its intensity. After the heat began properly, he continued arguing with her and fought when she tried to service him. He could not calm down no matter how much the woman tried to ply him with promised pleasure. The toys she had were of little interest and the way she rubbed her body against him was utterly repulsive even six hours into his heat. After twelve hours of him trashing about in bed every time she touched him intimately the woman gave up and left, leaving him a message that she felt she was doing more harm than good by staying for him to read when he calmed down enough to regain coherent thought. He did not respond to the offer of a therapy session while he was not in heat.

A few additional experiments of his own had frustrating results. Women were right out - which he already knew - and he sent a scathing email to Mycroft about his choice of sexual therapist explaining that point in more detail than his elder brother likely wanted to know. He was still attracted to men in uniform, significantly, but mating with one wasn't high on his list of desires. This wasn't new. It wasn't caused by his trauma no matter how much Mycroft or Mummy tutted at him. He just didn't like it when other people started touching his genitalia. He may lack some data, as he had not attempted sexual encounters prior to this mess, but he wasn't experiencing flashbacks or being triggered when he rejected an overly forward caress. He'd only tried it in the first place because he was trying to replace the cocaine, but that wasn't a sex-positive motivation. He'd started the cocaine so that he wouldn't have to service himself to exhaustion with toys that left him feeling alone and empty, so really having to put in more work by entertaining an alpha in ways that made him feel vulnerable and weak made little sense in hindsight.

Sherlock did manage to make a few interesting business contacts during his experimentation. He'd found one pub in particular that was always stuffed with veterans and military alphas on leave and enjoyed the gentle attention they'd given him and the fact that those he'd attempted his experiments with responded appropriately to the words 'stop that' after even the lightest touch of his thigh and only grumbled their disappointment as they stormed away when they realized his flirtation would not lead to him stripping naked back at theirs. He became a regular, ordering fish and chips and having a couple drinks at least once a week surrounded by protective-smelling alphas who were polite and not at all flirtatious unless he initiated things. Several of them became clients, and soon enough the bartender started to have a few phone numbers of people with puzzles for him when he came in. It was apparently common for military personnel to come home to something suspicious or missing and most wanted someone who could resolve the problem quickly without necessarily involving the police. It was ideal to handle whatever was going on before they were shipped out again to whatever international conflict the government thought was worth killing its citizens over and the official criminal and civil remedies moved at a glacial pace for smaller inquiries. Even if many of the requests were a bit dull, the extremely short turn-around time he was alloted made for something of a challenge. Sometimes he could complete three or four cases in a day, filling his pockets with cash his brother couldn't monitor or restrict the use of and earning himself applause and a free meal as a bonus if he managed to meet them back at the pub and rattle off the solutions to their problems or return their lost property amid an audience of their brothers in arms. Or, if they didn't like the truth and they tried to punch him, the other patrons of the pub generally wouldn't let it get past the first swing or two.


	4. Lieutennant John H Watson

**Lieutennant John H. Watson**

On a very busy Saturday night, Sherlock lingered after returning an eighteen-year-old's mother's wedding ring to him. It had been taken accidentally when his roommate moved out after becoming mixed into a box of the roommate's old keepsakes when the roommate had his omega over one night for a sexual encounter more acrobatic than anything Sherlock thought could possibly be pleasurable. The alpha told him he thought that Sherlock's job was a great way to 'work through the pain' and mentioned that it was a shame the police didn't employ omegas because Sherlock could clearly help catch people like whoever hurt him if given the chance at the job. After blinking dumbly for a moment he realized he must still reek of rape recovery even all these months later, and that was why no alphas would flirt with him overtly. Sherlock cursed his inability to smell himself as his mind supplied him with ample evidence that he'd been broadcasting his condition all along. He cautiously explained that he was not interested in sex and bemoaned the difficulty of getting his hormones rebalanced given that fact to a table full of freshly minted soldiers radiating protective pheromones just for him. A bear of a man grabbed his wrist to pull Sherlock closer and told him that a couple hours of no-pressure cuddling in a booth and nibbling on greasy foods sounded like a great evening to him. The positive alpha attention would help him, triggering his enhanced omega healing so long as things didn't sour the way they usually did, and so Sherlock cautiously agreed. Everything seemed agreeable until the man stood up, and reached to put his arm around Sherlock, looming over him for a moment in what should have been a comforting gesture. He dwarfed even Sherlock's impressive, and for an omega quite unusual, height. The reflexive spike of fear that shot through his (apparently already uncomfortable and mildly distressed) scent carried through enough of the pub to turn some heads.

"Is there a problem over here, Normandin?" a commanding voice cut through the background noise of the pub. The alpha that spoke was short and dressed a bit like Sherlock's father in a lumpy jumper over a button down shirt and cheap slacks. Despite his clothing, he was only a handful of years older than Sherlock or possibly the same age, between twenty-two and twenty-nine.

"No, Lieutenant," the brick wall of an alpha replied, "just trying to help this poor thing calm down a bit."

"I'm fine," Sherlock said reflexively.

"I appreciate you saying so, but it's clear you aren't," the wall said as he sat back down at the table instead of moving to a booth as they had planned.

"You are just very... large," Sherlock explained, feeling better now that he was once again looking down at the table of large seated alphas and one standing but surprisingly short one. He observed that he had never once felt any inclination to sit down, and had spent the last hour standing behind the chair he'd been offered, leaning forward occasionally but never so much so that his eye level was lower than theirs. He made a mental note of the oddity for later reflection.

"Anything I can help with?" the short alpha asked. He had sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes. From his calluses and the faint scents lingering on him he was a doctor as well as a soldier and at least recently avoiding meat in his diet. "I'm a doctor, Royal Army Medical Corps, if you're feeling ill I can help, or get you to a clinic."

"No, I'm not ill, I..." Sherlock began, but was cut off.

"He's recovering from a bond gone sour, Watson," one of the other alphas at the table shouted over the din of the busy pub, "someone did him wrong in the worst way. He goes about fixing things for people to bring balance to the world."

"Found my mum's ring," his client spoke up, his voice a bit muffled. He'd gone a bit misty after he got the ring back, and tipsy rather quickly while Sherlock was negotiating his needs with his associates. "I thought I'd lost it, but now I can give it to Lindsey and do it all proper."

"He just needs somewhere quiet and safe for a bit," the wall-sized alpha spoke up just as Sherlock was trying to speak again.

"Attacking an omega in his own nest, I hope the bastard that did it got the book thrown at him," a female alpha with multiple tattoos on her exposed arms added.

"I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself!" Sherlock shouted over the latter half of the tattooed woman's commentary.

"If you say it's fine, then it's fine," the short man, Lieutenant Watson, said with a kind nod and walked back to a small table where a single plate and cup were sitting. Sherlock endured roughly twenty-six more seconds of the overeager protectiveness of the younger soldiers before walking away. He made a disjointed circuit of the room, observing someone ask the lieutenant if they could use the other two chairs at his table and receive permission to take one away. The man was unassuming. Polite but not overly social. Short, nonthreatening as he sat with a decidedly approachable air about him, but with a commanding voice when needed. No fashion sense to speak of, or perhaps from a family with financial difficulty and wearing castoffs from an older relative. Was medical training free for those enlisted in the armed services, or would fees for his training have sapped a middle-class family of resources? Was it a reimbursement program, with the check in the mail now that he had actually started his service? Sherlock couldn't recall ever needing or knowing that data point, something he would have to rectify soon. He dropped into the remaining chair at the small table when he reached that part of the pub again.

"I am looking at new living arrangements. My current flat is no longer comfortable for obvious reasons," Sherlock explained briskly.

"That's probably healthy," Watson replied slowly. "Setting up new nest can be cathartic."

"Unfortunately, I haven't found anything suitable that is immediately available without making a long term commitment. I am a student at Oxford and come into London nearly every weekend to work, you see. I need to remain close to campus in the short term and have a rather restrictive budget enforced on me despite being gainfully self-employed. I'll be moving closer to town after I start my doctoral work. I'm not interested in bonding, but I am... not fine. None of it is fine."

"I've seen you here before, when you did that job for Nelson and he tried to deck you for your trouble," Watson explained. "It was all over and you'd left by the time we got him packed into a cab. It wasn't your fault the baby probably isn't his, and he wouldn't have paid you upfront to check up on things if he didn't suspect it in the first place."

"It is an occupational hazard. I try to deliver such news in places where I can easily escape the fallout if need be, and I am far from helpless in a fight," Sherlock pointed out.

"I thought the way you laid out all the evidence to be pretty brilliant, myself, though he'll be a few years living down the way you sliced into him about how unsatisfied his husband was. I went over the whole thing with Sanders later, while we were trying to decide if we needed to write him up for it. Taking the first swing at an omega is the sort of thing that should get written up, particularly since he was in uniform and really shouldn't have been while drinking that much, but those regs are softly enforced and you dodged him like it was something out of a movie script. In the end, I'm technically not his CO until the plane lands and Sanders has a soft spot for guys that get cuckolded while overseas, so he got a warning and knows I'll have my eye on him."

"That is appreciated," Sherlock acknowledged stiffly. Watson thought he'd been brilliant? Sherlock closed his eyes a moment and pulled up the memory of that night. Watson was there, at the next table with a few older men - the officers sitting separately from the regular enlisted man and women. He was small and easily dismissed, dressed in the same unfashionable dull clothing, but he had been listening with rapt attention as Sherlock listed out the deductions he'd made based on the pattern or wear on a leather jacket, trace evidence on the floor of their car, and the state of the omega's jeans.

It had been a rather interesting case with the bonded omega husband Jack stepping out primarily with beta and other omega women so that he could top them. Sherlock had gone undercover after gathering enough evidence to prove infidelity and started gossiping with Jack to get an explanation. He'd barely prompted him before getting an earful about selfish alphas who don't pay any attention to the front half of male omegas. Jack was the sort of male omega with no scrotum, vestigial or otherwise, and his over-sharing about the mechanics of how he had sex the way he wanted while not having functional testicles made Sherlock quite glad his transport was of a different model entirely, even if it did mean he was stuck with only the one shared opening for dual use and all the infection risks and other difficulties that implied. That Jack had found a female alpha that could impregnate him while also letting him do the specific sex acts that he liked to do honestly seemed like a better situation for Jack all around.

Mr. Nelson did not appreciate having those details supplied to him at a table full of his comrades in arms. The pub had been fairly packed and the soldier had wanted some of his buddies there to help him figure out how to fix it, only for Sherlock to lay out all the reasons why it was well past fixable. He'd taken a swing at Sherlock when he'd relayed Jack's assertion that he wouldn't have strayed if Nelson had been more creative with the variety of his kisses, which seemed like a ridiculously minimal thing to Sherlock and not at all a solution to wanting more attention on one's penis until after he'd repeated it verbatim. The reaction of the audience made the double entendre he'd missed at first obvious in hindsight.

"I hadn't fully considered all of my words before I spoke them."

"Yeah, I got that impression. The public shaming was rather brutal, but he also deserved it a bit for ignoring his husband's needs," Watson said slowly, but picked up the pace as he continued. "Back on topic: I do know a few resources that help with broken bonds, but the programs I'm most familiar with are geared more toward helping alphas." Was he being purposefully obtuse? "Or, I'm sorry, this place is a riot and it is hard to get a clear scent amid all this. The army does have excellent resources for widows and some of them are available to the general public for a fee."

"I am not widowed," Sherlock said through clenched teeth.

"Sorry, sorry, I just wanted to be sure. I'm getting some mixed signals." The sincere apology was followed by the man leaning forward. He hesitated long enough for Sherlock to object if he wanted, then took a long, deliberate and complex set of breaths through his nose in careful stages. A medical scenting, the sort of low-resource first aid an army doctor would still need to know how to do well while their counterparts in modern hospitals would rely on more objective tests. It was becoming a lost art, with the unshakable certainty of a computer print out eclipsing the more subjective subtleties a proper trained scenting could uncover. Sherlock moved his chair closer so that they were almost touching, encouraging the man to take in the necessary data. It also allowed him to do some proper scenting of his own, though he tried to be more discrete about it. Watson smelled fresh: citrus or growing things on a country breeze, with a base of petrichor. It reminded him vaguely of the way the linens smelled at his parent's vacation home, but sharper. The alpha muskiness was a warm undertone, and the pheromones currently mixed into that bottom layer showed some concern and a lot of attraction, along with a fair amount of the same protectiveness he got from most alphas here that had kept Sherlock coming back to this pub.

This was nice, having an alpha pay attention to the important details and respond properly to Sherlock's needs instead of assuming some good sex as soon as possible would fix him. The alpha offered help, backed off when Sherlock made him feel unwelcome, but did not retract his offer of help or snap at Sherlock for being ungrateful. He'd ensured that Sherlock could come over to speak with him without the additional attention of the younger soldiers pressuring him and speaking for him. All while keeping his attraction to Sherlock contained to a bit of body language and a strong undercurrent in his scent. Sherlock took another deep breath of his comforting scent, and started talking quietly.

"I'd invited an alpha to share my heat after meeting him via a service, but he found the collar I wore insulting and tried to pry it off me. The pressure placed on my bonding glands was forceful enough to confuse my biology. It was just enough pressure to start a reaction, but not enough to do the job properly. I wasn't fully into my heat at the time and we never even got fully undressed," Sherlock explained, as those details could not be deduced seven months after the fact. Watson didn't lean back when Sherlock did. "I... went feral and have not been able to tolerate company during my heats since. I have also been denied suppressants, which I had been using prior."

"You had right to defend yourself, to prevent an unwanted bond," Watson said mildly. "Have you had anything to eat yet?"

"Not today," Sherlock said, waving away the sudden concern, "I'm fine for a bit." The alpha sat back then, a considering look on his face that scrunched up his nose cutely. He was certainly not what people normally pictured when they thought of a commanding military officer: the stereotypical man in crisply pressed uniforms and looming tall and stern over less seasoned recruits. No, this rumpled little thing with a cute nose on a kind face looked nothing like a deadly soldier, but the story told by faint scars on his knuckles and the gun oil scent clinging to his lumpy jumper was altogether different. This eager puppy had some sharp teeth.

"Something to go then? You smell like your metabolism has been in conservation mode for a while now," Watson suggested casually, taking another bite of his dinner. Watson was an interesting puzzle, and Sherlock wanted to figure him out. The vegetarian salad was yet another incongruous part of the picture, though he didn't seem to be enjoying it. There must be a lot of arguing in the kitchen tonight, given the haphazard way the vegetables were sliced and the rather mangled tofu cubes. The dressing was likely mixed wrong, as well, and a couple of the burgers he'd seen as he walked around the pub looked like someone dipped a ladle into the grease trap and splashed it onto the plates.

"I quite like the fish and chips they have here, though the rest of the menu is a little hit and miss depending on how the chef and her wife are getting along," Sherlock replied neutrally. "From the state of the food I've seen coming out tonight they are having a row currently, and by that I mean they are likely shouting abuse at each other over the grill as we speak." Watson licked his lips in a way that could be taken as thoughtful or flirtatious. His entire demeanor was still very carefully ambiguous despite the swell of hormones broadcasting attraction.

"I'm staying two blocks from here. It's a nice hotel, not terribly expensive but then I don't need much in the way of amenities. Just having my own shower is a bit of a luxury, considering where I'll be next week." Sherlock though the implications of that over for a moment, and when he didn't respond the alpha continued. "They have several vacancies and service all genders with a couple floors segregated by a keyed lift system, if you think a night or two of peace behind a secure door instead of in the place you were attacked will help you to settle yourself."

"I am categorically against sexual intercourse of any kind," Sherlock said after a long pause. Lieutenant Watson's innuendo was obtuse enough to be excused as a pure and innocent attempt to assist, but the inflections and the way his eyes quickly skimmed Sherlock's body at key moments before returning to respectfully looking only at his face ensured that it could be taken for flirting even if Sherlock hadn't gotten a good sniff of the man's pheromones.

"I never suggested anything like that," Watson predictably answered.

"I could eat, I suppose, but it is a bit crowded in here tonight," Sherlock admitted, looking down demurely and leaning a little closer again, playing the game.

"I'll be back in a bit, could you watch my drink for me?" Watson paused just long enough to catch Sherlock's nod before darting off with his plate in hand. He moved through the crowd quickly utilizing his height to duck under raised arms and moved quickly instead of cautiously, ignoring his inability to see past the larger people in the packed pub. Sherlock lost sight of him, but the bar was over that way and it was fairly obvious what Watson would be doing once he located an employee.

Sherlock pulled the glass closer to him and found it contained a rather weak cider inside. Cautious of alcohol or just not in the mood for it, and also eating vegetarian food. There were a number of possible medical reasons that would also explain his willingness to entertain an omega who was bluntly against having sex in his hotel room, but Watson didn't seem to exhibit any side effects with his lightly tanned skin and energetic little trot. Possibly a negative history with alcohol, but it wasn't full avoidance so family rather than himself. Perhaps a moral choice for the vegetarianism, which fit with a doctor willing to go into combat and intervene when it seemed one of his fellows four times his size was harassing an omega. Then again, there weren't many places within the medical profession open to Alphas, as it was an omega trait to heal and comfort and a beta trait to support and aid, not to mention the issues with an alpha going into a rut or haze because of a hormonal patient. That only hinted at more subtleties to the man's character. Not the type to drug him, clearly, so Sherlock had little worry of consuming anything the man handled. Not that that didn't mean he wouldn't observe the offering carefully. Sherlock pulled out a cigarette, but remembered at the last moment that smoking when on a date with a nonsmoker was considered impolite due to the unwanted flavor it imparted during kissing. He sat looking at the fag in his hand for several minutes trying to decide if Lieutenant Watson was or was not planning on there being kissing at some point during the evening and if he wanted to encourage that or not.

"Hi there, lonely, need a light?" a thin brunette alpha said, sliding into Watson's chair without invitation. Sherlock looked the willowy man up and down as he scooted his own chair back to its original position. A businessman. He likely fancied himself enough of a soldier to fit in with the crowd here because he'd gone to a military themed private school, but had never actually served and likely edited stories from his school days to make them sound like they happened during boot camp. Older, at least forty-five but more likely just over fifty, his flat brown hair an expensive dye job to make himself look younger. Smoker, tipsy, divorced from a beta wife. Three children, two adopted, one dog, two betas on the side one of which was long term.

"I don't accept favors from adulterers," Sherlock quipped. "Are both your girlfriends unavailable this evening?"

"Wha? Who told you-?" The other man sputtered.

"It's fairly obvious just from looking at you, please do go away."

"You shouldn't be so cold, sweetie, and whatever you've heard can be put out of that pretty little head of yours, it can't be about me. I'd remember seeing a tall beauty like you before." The man crowded close, shifting the chair back into Sherlock's personal space and pulling out a lighter that was designed to look far more expensive than it was. Sherlock put his cigarette away to stop him from trying to light it. "Why don't you smile?" Sherlock ignored him and he continued talking after a moment of icy silence. "I bet you look lovely when you smile. Don't you want to look lovely?"

"I want you to leave me alone," Sherlock said, conceding that the man wouldn't take a hint by standing up. He glanced away but didn't see Watson returning yet. The fish and chips was always fried fresh, getting it wrapped up to go would take a minimum of fifteen minutes and given how busy it was tonight perhaps another twenty depending on how busy the fryer was. Watson was unlikely to wait the full time without returning, but was likely allowing Sherlock have ample time to decide he wasn't interested and vanish. The lack of typical alpha pushiness was oddly attractive. Sherlock was content to wait for his return, and seeking him out at the bar might convey the wrong message about how eager Sherlock was to participate in whatever the Lieutenant had planned, but staying in the company of this cretin was not an option.

"Now that's no way to be," the idiot was still talking. "You came to a pub looking for an alpha, you won't find one moping by yourself and sending anyone who talks to you away." Sherlock started walking off toward the restrooms, intending to circle around to the bar so he wouldn't be as easy to follow. After a few paces the creep grabbed at his arm. "Hey, I'm still talking to you."

"You are talking in my general direction," Sherlock corrected, shaking off the offensive contact. The skin of his arm itched despite his long sleeve shirt and winter jacket. "You can continue to do so if you like, but it will have to be from a much greater distance."

"Playing hard to get?"

"He isn't playing anything," Watson's voice cut in. He strode between them, not breaking eye contact with the taller alpha even as he tilted his head to speak to Sherlock. He carried one of the tacky light-up coasters the pub used to page patrons when their orders were ready in one hand. "The food will be a while. I thought we might wait for it up front."

"Oh, come on, like an omega like him is going to be satisfied by a pipsqueak like you," the business man slurred. "It'd be like trying to fill a champagne flute using a shot glass."

"My mistake, your beta girlfriends aren't out of town, they've dumped you," Sherlock said, finally noticing the state of the man's trousers and scratch near his hair line. The distractions his unbalanced biology kept throwing up in his way were intolerable. "Found out about each other, did they? You don't actually want me, you want a place to sleep. Either get a hotel room or go beg your ex-wife to take you back. If you lie and say you left your mistress willingly she might actually let you sleep on the couch."

"Who the fuck told you about that?" the older man shouted. "It was Marcie, wasn't it? That back-stabbing bitch."

"Go on up front, honeybee," Watson commanded, his voice quiet and steely, "this dickless piece of shit isn't worth any of your time." The cloud of scent around the officer was nearly visible in its intensity, a promise of dire consequences if the injured omega under his protection was touched.

"Yes, Lieutenant," flew out of his mouth. Sherlock's higher brain functions were too tangled up in themselves by how he'd just been addressed to take control of the situation, but his hind brain seemed to know exactly how to handle current events. He fled to the front of the pub as instructed, finding a place to stand near where the called in to-go orders were lined up for delivery boys to fetch. His heart and breathing rates were elevated, but not from fear or anger. _Honeybee_ echoed through his mind, tripping up his attempts to rationalize his reaction. He was obviously overreacting wildly; Sherlock hadn't introduced himself properly. The man likely didn't know Sherlock's name, of course he had to come up with some other form of address. The protective behavior was between a doctor and a sick stranger seeking aid. There was no logical reason for Watson's behavior to make the baser parts of Sherlock's omega nature resonate like a well played instrument.

"Mr. Holmes," a short beta woman addressed him, pulling him out of his introspection. "The car is outside."

"What could my brother possibly want now?" he asked the petite woman. Dark hair, brown eyes this time, probably only started fucking Mycroft two weeks ago.

"I'm supposed to bring you home," she explained. "I was told there was an incident with an alpha that distressed you at 21:32 and you were unable to leave promptly of your own will." Sherlock glanced at his phone, noting several missed calls and some new texts. He had silenced Mycroft's text alerts and disabled the vibration feature for his number. It was currently quarter past ten, so she must have meant the completely harmless fresh recruit and the moment of primal panic that had first gained Lieutenant Watson's attention this evening.

"You have to be the least competent woman my brother has in his employ if this is how you handle an assignment based on surveillance of a target who isn't supposed to know he's being watched. You might want to brush up your CV, you won't last long if you are this sloppy all the time." He quickly read the four texts he'd gotten from his brother, huffing out his annoyance at his brother's meddling. "I am not in need of your assistance."

"I have to bring you straight home, no detours and no arguments," she asserted.

"You are grossly misinformed. I do not have any need of your services."

"Don't make this difficult, Mr. Holmes, I am here for your safety. Please get in the car."

"You can leave me alone and take the false concern with you."

"I can't leave you alone for a minute tonight, can I?" Watson chuckled as he butt into the conversation. The commanding lieutenant was once again hidden behind a soft and nonthreatening exterior. However, his clothing was a bit more disheveled than it had been, he was slightly sweaty, and there was water splashed on his left trouser leg. Sherlock felt a heady rush as he deduced that this man just got into a physical fight over him and won. He wondered if the philandering businessman was still lying on the filthy tiles next to the urinal that splashed Watson's leg. "Everything alright, honeybee?"

"My elder brother has sent a completely unnecessary babysitter in the form of his latest mistress, because of course I want to be driven home against my will like an errant twelve-year-old while talking to whoever he's sleeping with this week," Sherlock bit out angrily.

"That's downright cruel," Watson said with a frown.

"I am under no obligation to be nice to..."

"No, no, not you," Watson said quickly, laying a hand gently on Sherlock's arm. "Just, assuming he knows everything what went on with you recently that's just about the most insulting thing he could have done, isn't it?"

"Listen Mister..."

"Doctor," Watson corrected her.

"My job is to get Mr. Holmes..."

"Do you have any familiarity with recent events in his life?" Watson interrupted again. "I don't think you do, or else you completely misunderstand."

"With all due respect, this is a family matter and not something..."

"Do you want to go to with this woman right now?" Watson asked Sherlock.

"No." Which was perfectly obvious, so clearly he was really asking something else. Perhaps permission, in the same slantwise way he'd made all of his offers this evening? "I don't have any objection to your actions thus far this evening; do continue to act as you have."

"Right then," Watson said, straightening his jumper before squaring up properly. Sherlock caught himself reaching out toward the alpha and folded his fingers together behind his back. This woman would report everything to Mycroft and he did not want to give the chubby busybody any more data then was strictly necessary. "Go away, right now, and tell the overbearing ass that sent you here that he is not helping anything by making his brother feel helpless or otherwise taking control of his life away from him. In fact, if this is indicative of a pattern of behavior," Watson paused slightly to give Sherlock a look and Sherlock nodded, "then he might have an answer for why he is having such a hard time recovering."

Sherlock's eyebrows jumped up to his hairline. He'd always chafed under Mycroft's overbearing attention, but it never occurred to him that his reaction to his brother's manipulations was at all related to his feelings about alphas. Mycroft was a beta, after all, why should there be a connection? Yet it rang true, at least for his inability to find balance since the incident, and he'd been deleting everything about his own sexuality for years now. Surely there was a moment, some inciting incident, where he had made the decision to start deleting it. For his entire life Mycroft had been very... dominating. It wasn't a problem when Sherlock was a small child, in fact he remembered welcoming his elder brother's direction and instruction, but at some point it soured. Sherlock couldn't quite put his finger on when, it seemed like a gradual and perfectly natural progression as Sherlock aged and became more independent while Mycroft failed to adjust his expectations. When Sherlock moved out of the family home into a flat of his own instead of returning to dorm life, Mycroft had invoked positively ancient laws to keep a tight hold on Sherlock's trust account and even restrict his access to any money he earned that wasn't cash in hand. He'd always had him watched and constantly prodded him to act certain ways, do certain things, and even to take certain classes. It was smothering, Sherlock knew that, he'd just never seen it in the context of his fear of an alpha controlling his life.

"I have a job to do, and that job is to get my employers baby brother home safe and sound," Mycroft's lacky said in a clipped voice.

"Baby? He's in uni!"

"If we just leave there is nothing she can do to stop us," Sherlock pointed out.

"The food," Watson said simply, with a gesture at the end of the bar where other orders were constantly being set up and dispatched. Sherlock took the electronic coaster from John's hand and turned away from the irritating lackey to step up to the end of the bar. He swiftly caught the barman's attention and held up the unlit coaster.

"Jacob, Lieutenant Watson ordered some food to go," Sherlock said with a nod toward where the two petite people were still arguing. "We would have been best pleased to leave before that distasteful woman arrived, but as it is I was wondering if something could be done to expedite things before that lively discussion becomes a violent altercation."

"No problem, Sherlock. If I knew it was for you I'd have gotten it out already," Jacob said as he pulled containers from different orders and put them into a waiting bag along with assorted disposable cutlery and a couple bottled pops and from the mini-fridge under the bar. "I wouldn't want you to feel trapped here considering, well, what happened to you." Dear god, did everyone know more about this than he did? Obvious, he'd deleted the relevant information years ago when it seemed superfluous and failed to reestablish it now that it was relevant. Better question: Why was everyone who interacted with him that wasn't Mycroft-approved better at handling his situation than the ones who were?

"I have the food and will be in contact with my brother by text shortly," Sherlock said when he returned to where Watson was now in a staring contest with the lackey. While she was glaring with a vicious scowl, Watson had a mild smile on his lips and a look in his eyes that promised murder and ruination if he was pushed any further. It was a good look on him. Sherlock passed the bag of food to Watson as they walked out, pulling out his phone to deal with his sibling. A new message was waiting for him.

_I only want to help you with your current difficulties. The alphas you are entertaining seems quite volatile and ill suited to task. Please get in the car. - M_

_It has become clear to me that my current difficulties have a singular root cause. - SH_

_Correcting your inexperience with random men from a bar is ill-advised. I have told you repeatedly that there are professionals available to assist you in a controlled environment. - M_

_Your assumptions are based on bad data. Inexperience is not the root cause of my problems. - SH_

_Of course it is. Sex alarms you because you have been sheltered from it for too long and your natural biology has finally had enough denial. Only building a familiarity will correct that, and your omega hormones need to be rebalanced by sharing a heat with an alpha properly. - M_

_Loss of control alarms me. I am merely ambivalent about sex. - SH_

_You are an omega, you can't be ambivalent. Only a handful out of every ten thousand betas are asexual. There is no such thing as an asexual omega. - M_

"You should stop texting him now," Watson said, then quickly continued as if realizing there was something wrong with what he'd just said. "You can keep at it if you want, of course. I'm not stopping you from doing anything, but your scent has gone from having a few notes of general stress to rather unpleasantly sharp very quickly."

"I'll end the conversation shortly," Sherlock compromised. He felt Watson link their arms together to help steer him down the sidewalk safely. He allowed it, switching to one-handed typing to hold onto the smaller man's arm properly.

"As long as you feel alright, then it's fine. Family can be important, even if they are acting like a horse's ass. I'm not going to lie to you about this; it is a little alarming me how stressed you seem all the sudden. If you need a break from the conversation, take one. You can always pick it back up later."

_Stop trying to force me to do things I do not want to do. - SH_

_I have your best interests at heart. This is not about choice, you are wasting away and will have to spend your next several heats with an alpha or you won't be alive this time next year. - M_

_You are making me feel ill. - SH_

_These are merely facts, brother mine. - M_

_No, you misunderstand. - SH_

_Your ongoing actions are making me ill. - SH_

_Don't be dramatic. - M_

_Forcing me to do things instead of asking me if I want to do those things after I was nearly forced to bond with someone I did not choose to bond with. - SH_

_Choosing a single sex therapist for me instead of offering me a few well vetted recommendations. - SH_

_Effectively forcing me to have sex with someone I have not chosen under pain of death, someone who would not allow me to wear a collar no matter how obviously distressed I became because she felt that the collar would have poor associations for me. - SH_

_It was very sound logic, who can say what reaction you would have to wearing that whore's contraption again? - M_

_I wear it all the time, though it is too obvious in public. I sleep poorly without it. I spent hours demanding its return, and was quite clear in my request and the reasoning behind it before I lost control over my temper to the point of incoherence. - SH_

_I was unaware of that, I will instruct your new therapist to use the collar. He is much more your taste, large and athletic. I won't be able to vet an alternate before your next heat, but if you dislike him we could possibly have him replaced again. - M_

_You are making me ill. - SH_

_You are acting like a child. - M_

_You are making me ill. Let me make my own choices. - SH_

_I am not forcing you to do anything. It is merely the most logical course of action and a known treatment to an illness. The alternative choice is to allow your hormonal imbalance to kill you.- M_

_You are my illness. - SH _

Sherlock sent the last text and then veered to the curb, dragging Watson along so he could spit bile into the gutter. The doctor's hands rubbed gentle circles on his back.

"A bit not good?" Sherlock asked weakly.

"No, not good. Anything you want to talk about or do you want to forget about whatever it was he said that set you off so badly?" Watson asked gently.

"I have to get my hormones balanced or I'll die."

"Well, obviously, that's what pining is," Watson replied testily. "I am a fully trained doctor."

"Pining? Why would I be pining? He tried to brutalize me and I don't mind saying I'm quite pleased he died while imprisoned awaiting charges. I most certainly do not want him back," Sherlock answered, feeling a bit wrong-footed. His instinct was to reject Watson's assumption out of hand as uninformed speculation, but he had allowed the man to scent him and he was a properly trained doctor even if his training wasn't likely to have specialized in omega-specific ailments. True, the pub was crowded, but the man had kept monitoring his scent even during their walk and was quite focused on Sherlock's current state.

"Your body doesn't care about that. It doesn't really know or care about birth control or collars, either. You had an alpha you were willing to go into heat with, he started to bond you, then he disappeared before your heat was over," Watson explained simply. There was a beat of silence as they continued their walk. "That wasn't explained to you?"

"It was, but not... It was always phrased as rape recovery or being widowed, or more generically as a progressively worsening imbalance of hormones."

"Those are two medically distinct conditions, with different types of fluctuation and overproduction of various hormones and pheromones. You do smell a bit like a rape victim, but that could just be because you were a victim of violence generally. If I remember correctly there really isn't much physiological difference between the two - rape is just a specific sort of violence and the scent isn't that different from an alpha or beta who was attacked, with comfort and affection being part of a suggested treatment all around. I'd feel more comfortable saying all this if I had the chance to review my books, it has been quite a while since I took classes on omega biology and it isn't something I needed much - medics don't encounter omega-specific issues often on the battlefield. That isn't the strongest scent you carry, though. Primarily, you were rejected by an alpha you wanted to be with. That also matches your reactions and disinterest in finding a new alpha to share your next heat. That the person who was violent toward you is the same person that you nearly bonded with doesn't always matter to your more animalistic instincts."

"He smelled like a rapist to the criminals in the holding cell that killed him."

"Because he would have been covered in sour bonding and feral omega, yeah, but that doesn't dictate how your body chose to respond, especially since it sounds like you didn't spend much time in anyone's company once things went bad. The body doesn't always respond predictably to trauma, and while your mental state does factor into the equation most of the time it can't override your physical experience." Watson asserted. "My father is still living in the house where I grew up. My mother pined to death in that house. The scent is similar to widowing, I suppose, but they aren't the same." Sherlock didn't think a more twisted and vile tragedy could be written in two simple sentences than the story of Watson's mother. It did explain why an army surgeon understood the subtleties of this particular ailment so well.

"The recommended treatment isn't much different, and my inability to comfortably seek that treatment remains a problem."

"That's not exactly true, and there is something to be said for the method used to administer treatment no matter what ailment we're talking about. I could be wrong, but it seems to me you've had it coming at you in all the wrong ways."

"Sherlock."

"What?"

"My brother's lackey mentioned my last name, Holmes, but I had not offered you my full name. Please call me Sherlock."

"Oh, Nelson had told me your name. I'm John Watson. A Lieutenant a couple months out of Sandhurst set to join the RAMC's Northumberland Fusiliers next week. It's a support attachment that moves around from one assignment to another, wherever there is a mission that needs additional medical staff. I think we're headed for Africa to back up some of the aid programs there, but the details are all classified and we won't know them until we're en route," the man babbled pleasantly. Inane chatter about his military training carried them the rest of the way to the hotel and up to John's room.


	5. In a Hotel Room

AN: **Important formatting note. **I have broken up the chapters to match my Scriviner document so it is less of a hassle to update this story. If this looks familiar, that is because it used to be part of the previous chapter. _**There have been many edits, both for clarity and for plot.**_ Re-read or skim until you reach the new content at your pleasure.

* * *

**In a Hotel Room**

John laid out the food while Sherlock was pretending to use the toilet and having a small crisis. He didn't have much time before John became concerned, but he could still have a cursory cleanup of his scattered thoughts. His mind palace had been in a shambles since the incident, but a few minutes tending it should help calm him down and put things in proper perspective. He sorted out his thoughts on the matter of his recovery, both from the incident and from the drugs, which were tossed about the hallway floor as if a tornado had ripped them out of their places. They never stayed where he put them, but perhaps the primal fits that scattered his thoughts were an instinctive protest against an egregious misfiling of data relevant to his survival. As much as he'd resented living under Mycroft's thumb for years now, he had still trusted his brother enough that active harm was a bit of a shock. Seven years age difference meant that Mycroft had often been used as an additional babysitter when their parents were busy or wanted a night to themselves, and as they aged Mycroft's assurance that he knew how to best organize Sherlock's life had only shifted to handling finances instead of games. It wasn't intentional, of that Sherlock was certain, but as he sorted out his experiences since deciding to replace the cocaine with casual sex his brother's efforts were no longer merely ineffective or annoying. He was always in poorer condition after Mycroft visited, even if he had made some recent improvement. He would fail to eat properly for days, take unplanned doses of cocaine, or go completely without sleep in favor of focusing completely on experiments that were not actually time sensitive immediately following an incident of Mycroft's meddling. He blamed his inability to be objective and notice the pattern on the years of Mycroft taking care of him during his childhood. Without reading any of the replies to his last text, Sherlock composed a new message to his brother.

_I am compromised, more so since the incident. I have allowed sentiment to cloud my judgment chronically. - SH_

_That is a relief. I'll have a car at the hotel in five minutes. - M_

_You continue to misunderstand. You have done me active harm. I did not see it because it was outside of what I considered possible. I trust you, so I allowed you to harm me. That stops now. - SH_

_I have been acting with only your best interests at heart, brother, no matter what that soldier has told you. - M_

_My current illness has a strong emotional component that has been ignored despite a physical inability to remove that aspect of the equation via any amount of self-mastery. My conclusions are based on objective analysis of recent actions after I was alerted to the possibility that I was being harmed by having control over certain parts of my life taken from me. -SH_

_I will take your lack of immediate response as indication that you are unable to refute this possibility. -SH_

_In future remember that my initial injury, such as it is, was caused by someone ignoring my preferences and desires and forcing me to do something against my will. Replicating that sensation, even while trying to aid me, does me active harm. I will no longer tolerate this. - SH_

_I will consider this and relay your concerns to your therapist. - M_

_Do not contact me for one week. I will be in touch if I need assistance, and am not naive enough to think you will pull your surveillance no matter how I feel about being constantly hunted. - SH_

_I expect at the end of that week to receive some explanation for why your precious therapists failed to mention any of this as a possible complication or to accurately communicate with me on the subject of my health in any meaningful way when a freshly minted army doctor a couple years removed from the relevant training could spot the problem after encountering me in a pub a couple times. - SH_

Sherlock sighed, flushed the toilet and washed his face and hands. The room was a decent sized suite with a full bed, nightstand, couch, television, coffee table, mini-fridge, microwave, two spindly wooden chairs, and a combination dining table and desk - all fairly well worn but not yet shabby. Big enough to not feel claustrophobic after a couple weeks of habitation, and given the lack of amenities at the extended-stay hotel likely well within modest means. A small trunk sat near the couch, likely housing those belongings that Watson could not fit into the drawers as nothing was laid out on the surfaces. The habit of a man used to staying in places where leaving things out meant inviting them to be used or taken. The table, directly to Sherlock's left as he exited the washroom, currently held two place settings, but Watson had removed the food from the table at some point and set the paper boats full of fried food on the radiator.

As soon as Sherlock left the bathroom Watson got up from the grubby couch to fetch the food back to the table, haphazardly abandoning the thick book he'd been browsing. It landed with a bounce before settling with the spine facing away from him on the cushion, leaving only a bland back cover within view and Sherlock without a clue as to the book's content without obviously going over to snoop. Perhaps a textbook, but it could be one of those thick fantasy novels that were in vogue. The Lieutenant seemed the type. There was cola and water, two portions of fish and chips, and the bisected remains of the terrible salad on offer, with half a box of rather expensive-looking chocolates sitting open on the coffee table next to a closed box from a local pastry shop. A card peeking out from under the lid of the chocolates identified the sweets as a going-away present.

"I finished what I had to say to my brother," Sherlock said, for want of any better way to start a conversation.

"I suppose you come from a well-off family that wishes the old custodian laws were still in place for unattached omegas," Watson replied, trying to sound comforting.

"Don't be ridiculous, most of them are still on the books and those with the means still employ them," Sherlock corrected, tapping his fingers against his palm as he hovered near the table. "They had most of their teeth taken out, true, but not all of them. I have a spending limit in place not only on my trust account, which as an adult I should have full use of, but also on my personal account which only has money in it that I have earned via my own business endeavors. I must also get permission to move house, though he hasn't been able to find a way to reestablish the part of the law that would force me to go home on command."

"You don't have any way out of that? If you are earning your own money you shouldn't have to ask permission to use it. I mean, if you can prove you are self-sufficient you must be able to get emancipation." Watson tilted his head as if trying to get the incongruous ideas within to fit together properly by letting gravity slide them around within his skull.

"Unfortunately not, my brother has ensured he will retain custody of me 'for my own good' for the next several years at least," Sherlock huffed out as he took a seat at the table. "My only option is to transfer that control via legal marriage to a bonded alpha and hope to be released from the restrictions once the bonding period is over, which isn't any less distasteful."

"I'm sorry you have to go through that, particularly on top of the rest," Watson said. Sherlock scrutinized him, but the statement that would be boilerplate from others seemed sincerely meant. "Why don't you tell me more about your job?"

Sherlock started to list out the little problems he'd fixed that week as part of an explanation that few of his recent clients had been very interesting. Watson interrupted to ask about a couple that he thought sounded interesting enough, and so they began. Deducing who was cheating and with which suspect based on the lingering scents hovering around them and the state of a woman's knees got him a chuckle. Laying out the identity of a thief based on a five minute look around the property in question had praise slipping easily from Watson's mouth. 'Amazing,' 'brilliant,' and 'so clever' surprising him with the blunt honesty fueling the words. Watson might be good at regulating his behavior in order to dance around Sherlock's severe reactions to being ordered about, but he wasn't putting on an act for this - he hardly seemed aware he was doing it. A little frown marred Watson's face suddenly while Sherlock was laying out how he'd helped an Italian alpha named Angelo beat a murder charge by proving he'd been housebreaking instead at the beginning of last year. Rather than finally start calling Sherlock a freak, as everyone eventually did, he picked up one of the chips from Sherlock's untouched meal and held it up a couple centimeters from Sherlock's lips.

"Eat something, Honeybee."

"I don't feel hungry."

"That's your hormones affecting your thyroid and suppressing your appetite. Your scent tells me you are starving. Please eat," the doctor elaborated. When this was met with stony silence he continued, "I put the time you spent in the toilet to good use and brushed up on the symptoms a bit."

Sherlock considered his situation and called the man's bluff by leaning forward to eat the offered chip straight out of his hand. Rather than back down from the inappropriate behavior, the man pushed the remains of the chip to the tips of his fingers to offer Sherlock the rest. Felling quite odd but unwilling to back down from the double-bluff, Sherlock did precisely that. The alpha licked his lips and broke off a bit of fish, the crispy batter crinkling as he offered to hand-feed Sherlock one bite at a time without comment as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do. As this when on, one bite after another in silence out of a stubborn unwillingness to back down, Sherlock started to feel light-headed. John moved closer, mixing offerings of chips and battered cod with sips of water. When the basket was half-empty Sherlock suddenly tipped sideways out of the narrow chair.

"Hey, hey, alright. Tell me what's wrong," John cooed in his ear.

"Just a bit of a rush," Sherlock said, his mind churning sluggishly. His earlier assessment that the doctor was not the type to drug him twirled lazily through his mind, taunting him.

"Do you feel nauseous at all? You said you hadn't eaten today, but what was it you last ate and when?"

"I... no. Tea, yesterday morning, with toast and honey," Sherlock said, sounding quite calm to his own ears as he sat on the floor at John's feet. Wait, he knew what this was: Kneeling at John's feet. A rush, like achieving a high from dancing for hours or immersing himself in the sound of his violin, not as fast and sharp as a hit of cocaine but equally strong. Dear god, he'd thought this sort of thing was exaggerated romanticism for the sake of appeasing alpha egos.

"I should have gotten you something lighter, if you've been just nibbling toast," John said apologetically. "Try to finish the water, then I'll help you lie down on the couch for a bit."

"No, I'm... good. This is good." Sherlock dropped his eyes back down to his knees and straightened his back a little, tucking his feet under himself to make the pose his body had insisted upon taking more obvious. "I'm hungry now that I've begun," Sherlock admitted clearly.

"Oh." Was the only response for a long moment. Then fingers grazed across Sherlock's brow, sliding back and following the curve of his scull to tickle the back of his neck briefly. It was quite nice, and Sherlock closed his eyes to pay full attention to the sensation. He noted with mild appreciation that John had used his right hand, as his dominant one was coated in grease. "Please don't push yourself, honeybee, but I'll give you as much as you like." A chip hovered in Sherlock's field of vision when he reopened his eyes, and the hand feeding resumed.

This was a positively ancient alpha-omega bonding ritual. Yesterday, Sherlock would have gladly launched into a long soliloquy about the ridiculousness of an alpha 'providing' for their omega by hand feeding them like a feral kitten in order to gain their trust and calm them. The idea of entering a submissive mindset instinctively and _enjoying the experience_ was laughable to him, as no one with any pride could enjoy such demeaning treatment. Yet, there he was, kneeling at John's feet, taking comfort and feeling quite calm indeed because an alpha who was attentive to his needs was spending an evening protecting and providing for him. It was oddly comforting to let John take care of his body's needs. As the natural high consumed him, Sherlock's mind stopped buzzing with worries, deductions, and what-if scenarios. It was like his mind palace had been filled with water: everything moving slower, but also smoother as his thoughts floated lazily along. Eventually Sherlock had finished his food and water, declined the coke and salad, and allowed John to spend a couple minutes using his clean right hand to play with Sherlock's hair while the alpha finished his own fish. The untouched salad portions and half of John's chips were left when John spoke again.

"It isn't too late to get something else ordered in, but you should probably let your body digest what you've had. Are you still hungry?" This was a good question. All relevant data provided, a simple yes or no response sufficient, John's opinion stated but not pushed, willing to comply with either answer.

"No." Sherlock's answer prompted a lot of rustling as John used the paper napkins to get the majority of the oil off his hand.

"We could go sit on the couch a while, watch whatever is on the telly or talk a bit more. If not, then I could read up some more on your condition and go over it with you, that might help you discuss it better with your own doctor at your next check-up. Or we could do something else, if you like." Sherlock considered this for a while, watching John's hands as they repeatedly ran over the paper napkins. "Of course, you can always leave, if you have had enough of me."

"I don't want to leave," Sherlock said decisively. The actual question was much more open ended, and his mind was still moving slowly, churning up possibilities as if out of deep mud before it could weigh his options properly. Answering promptly felt like an impossible task.

"That's fine. I'm going to clean up a bit, alright? You think it over." John cleared the remains of dinner and popped into the washroom. When he came out Sherlock was sitting on the couch where the medical textbook had been, the book now lying face-up on the far side of the coffee table.

"Television this time of night is usually horribly dull," Sherlock said. "The news programs are all over."

"We might catch a talk show," John said, coming over to sit close to Sherlock without touching him, "or a decent movie if we're lucky."

"It is something to do, I suppose," Sherlock said with a shrug. John put something on, but whatever he was watching wasn't the point. The point was sitting next to John and consuming as much alpha pheromone as possible now that his body had found some it would accept. John's scent was laced with a bit of surprise, lingering from when Sherlock had entered a submissive haze earlier, but was mostly just pleased and protective - perfect for getting Sherlock's wild hormone spikes to even out. The haze continued to be a strange and novel experience. It was a little like being high, with the contradictory feeling that he was more aware and clear-minded paired with a detachment that made it seem like most of his actions were instinctive or involuntary.

Over the next hour Sherlock slowly leaned sideways into John's personal space until he was laying with his head on the other man's lap. The intermediary stages of the maneuver had been quite pleasant: The pressing of his side against another warm body was comfortable given the draft coming in from the window. The snuffle of John scenting him again and Sherlock's obvious reciprocation, less a diagnostic tool than an instinctive exchange of identifying data. There was a hint of arousal in the smaller man's scent, but he did nothing about it and was as good as his word. Even when the program John was watching ended and they shifted to the bed there was no suggestion of sexual activity. John offered Sherlock a pair of pajama pants identical to the ones he changed into. They were not army issue, but certainly official merchandise purchased at the same time as his uniforms and made of offensively bold stripes of red, gold, and dark blue. Still, the cotton was soft enough and Sherlock would be unable to sleep comfortably in his tight jeans. In the loo he hung up his button-down shirt and flipped his vest inside-out, then swapped his jeans for the eyesore pajamas that were too short.

Sherlock did have to pull the drawstring quite a bit. Perhaps he had lost more weight than was technically healthy. Mycroft had been twice Sherlock's width when Sherlock had reached his full height and it looked like they might be at that point again. Looking in the mirror, Sherlock could admit to himself that it was his poor eating habits at fault this time, not that Sherlock was likely to admit aloud that the strict physical requirements working with MI5 put on Mycroft in his early career had done his brother a world of good. It was a legitimate excuse to stock his flat with pastries that Mycroft would not be able to resist, which would be a fine way to punish his brother for breaking their agreement when he showed up before he was welcome.

Sherlock woke up tangled in the soldier's arms, the warm scent of arousal clinging to them. John was still deeply asleep, his even breaths puffing against Sherlock's neck while Sherlock's face nuzzled the short blond fuzz of a military haircut. Despite the perfectly logical explanation that an alpha and omega sharing a bed would react to one another while asleep, the knowledge that he and John had matching morning erections made him uneasy. John could easily interpret it as consent for further activities and Sherlock was very much not ready for that. The long seconds it took to escape the bed without rousing the military alpha were made more difficult by having to suppress a rising panic, but he managed to slip away and shut himself into the loo with his clothes. Quickly deciding he could shower when he got home, he tossed his work clothes back on. Before leaving the hotel (in a perfectly dignified manner and not at all fleeing as if the room was on fire) he wrote his address on the back of one of his business cards and tossed it onto the table.


	6. Negotiations

**Negotiations**

Sherlock stopped at a café a block away from the hotel. It was the third open restaurant on the path to the train station where he'd stuffed an overnight bag into a locker, and the tantalizing aromas spilling onto the pavement from the various eateries open at this hour had been making his mouth water. This particular café was attached to a bakery, and he told himself he was just getting the pastries he'd planned on stocking to tease Mycroft with as he walked in. It wasn't one of those big coffee chains. Going by the state of the building, it was an old and well-established bakery that recently expanded into the storefront next door, using that space to tack a proper restaurant onto their previous business.

The menu was focused on the memorable theme of their specialty baked goods but diverse enough to satisfy a lot of needs so it was quite busy, the offerings ranging from a formal tea service or complicated espresso based drink for housewives to the grab and go breakfasts and quick lunches in takeout boxes office workers survived on. Sherlock selected one of the ready egg salad sandwiches from the case at the front, ordered a latte, and while he was at the counter selecting Mycroft bait he found himself very easily talked into having a proper sit-down breakfast of freshly fried eggs, toast, a fruit salad, and a truly indulgent cinnamon bun as big as his hand with fingers spread. The box of six smaller mixed pastries he selected sat in front of the unused place setting as he dug into what was, for him, easily four times the size of a normal meal.

"I know you are irritated with me, but there is no call to be so wasteful," Mycroft said as he sat down across from Sherlock several minutes later.

"That was a very short week, brother mine," Sherlock said as he finished his egg.

"I made no promises," the older beta said, which was accurate. Mycroft must have been practically vibrating in his seat from the amount of willpower he was expending by not nibbling on the cinnamon bun proudly displayed in the middle of the table, so at least Sherlock had that to entertain him.

"Say what you have to say and then go. I'm certain there is some international crisis that needs your attention," Sherlock said blandly as he stabbed at his fruit.

"I want to review why and how you think I am causing you harm."

"It is simple stimulus and response. You know I have been unhappy with your intrusive meddling for years, but the events of the last few months have made the way we treat one another problematic," Sherlock explained as clearly as he could.

"You claim to associate what that heathen did to you with the concern of an elder family member," Mycroft said, his voice mild with a slight raise to the end of the sentence to suggest a question. Since it was not phrased as a question Sherlock merely huffed. "Honestly, out of all your attempts to rid yourself of my influence I think that is the most transparent and flimsy effort to date. I am only doing what needs to be done."

"I realize I have made some mistakes in the past," Sherlock said quietly. It hurt his pride to say, but he had had variations of this argument enough times both in his mind palace and in real life over the years to know he needed to admit that fault to make any progress. "That does not mean I deserve to lose the right to make choices about my life in perpetuity. Your concern is noted, and even logical, but your actions have been too extreme."

"Considering the current situation, I categorically disagree."

"If not too extreme at the outset, then that level of control has gone on for too long." Sherlock looked at his brother, at the way he sat in the chair, the lines of his suit, and the bland look on his face. Mycroft was a master at being unreadable, but Sherlock had been learning to read him from the time he could care about anything more complicated than 'want milk now' or 'my nappy is dirty.'

"Again, I disagree. Your recent behavior doesn't contradict my position, it supports it."

"You don't know why I did it, and so your brain did the lazy thing and chalked it up to residual erratic behavior due to the drugs," Sherlock stated, surprised. The silence was answer enough, and he pulled out his phone to send a text. He continued speaking while he typed, his voice pitched low and full of venom, "You weren't being deliberately obtuse or teasing me, you think the things you have said are true and because of that false data you are unable to understand my recent actions at all."

"False data?" Mycroft asked, leaning forward.

"I am not feeling charitable enough to enlighten you," Sherlock spat, looking down at the abused yet uneaten fruit salad, the cinnamon bun, and the last quarter of toast still on the table. He'd wanted to eat all of it. He ought to eat all of it, he was underweight to an unhealthy degree and that needed to change, but his appetite had evaporated. Sherlock fiddled with his phone despite Mycroft attempting to catch his attention to continue the conversation. The text he sent received a single-letter reply of 'k,' which could mean anything or nothing and for the love of everything decent in the world it wasn't even _capitalized_. About ten minutes passed with only the background chatter of the café. Mycroft was clearly being tempted by the pastry, his left hand creeping closer to the cinnamon bun despite having clearly calculated how many calories it contained, his right hand gripping the arm of the plastic chair tightly.

"We can not resolve this through silence, Sherlock," Mycroft tried again suddenly. Sherlock scanned his brother's face and found that the older man was mildly alarmed.

"I have suggested how you might regain some of my trust, and asked you to investigate a perceived fault in your process of obtaining a therapist for me during that time so that you can provide me with the associated data. Providing me with that data is not a favor, as it is my own medical information. I fail to see why you are so reluctant to comply."

"The last time I left you unmonitored the end result was an addiction to opiates via illegal heat treatments," Mycroft said quietly.

"An error in judgment caused by a lack of data. Data I have since gone to lengths to obtain." Sherlock would have said more, but the skin around Mycroft's eyes tightened as something over Sherlock's shoulder caught the older man's attention.

"Hey there Honeybee, sorry I'm so late. I brought some take-out boxes over, so maybe we can do this as a picnic on the run," John said, stepping into view with a cup holder tray with two steaming beverages in one hand and two paperboard take-out containers in the other. Sherlock blinked up at him, wondering how 'I am at Janet's Cafe one block north of you attempting to eat a proper breakfast alone without success.' could possibly have prompted this particular reaction in the military alpha. Sherlock reached out and took one of the containers, dumping the uneaten salad in one while John packed the over-sized bun into the other. "You won't miss your train because you were waiting for me, will you?"

"I did miss it, but that was my own fault," Sherlock said. John was a horrible liar, there were a dozen tells easily on display that this was an on-the-spot improvised act even if Mycroft didn't know Sherlock's train will leave late tonight and not this morning.

"Sherlock," Mycroft started to speak, but Sherlock cut him off as he dropped the boxed salad on top of the assorted pastries and handed the blue-striped bag to John, taking a cup from him in a fluid exchange. A small part of his mind got a bit distracted by how perfectly John reacted to Sherlock's body language, taking up the bag of takeout and holding it still as Sherlock fussed with them to get everything settled correctly so they wouldn't shift like they'd done this a thousand times.

"Brother mine, I am not interested in your good intentions. They mean little compared to your actual accomplishments, which are a resounding failure. If you are this unwilling to give me the information I asked for, then I'll just go chase it down for myself."

"Oh, this is the brother," John mumbled to himself. Sherlock stalked off at a brisk pace. In the reflection of the mirrored office windows nearby Sherlock could see the adorable little trot John was forced to do to keep up. The people parting to let them through on the sidewalk showed more than the usual amount of confusion at their passing, no doubt trying to reconcile the conflicting information from their eyes and noses about which one was the alpha of the pair. He stopped at the crosswalk waiting for both the light and John. The next block didn't have any mirrored surfaces, not that that factored heavily into Sherlock's actions.

"You know," John said cautiously, "I expected him to be an Alpha with the way you talked about him." The shorter man wasn't out of breath. He wouldn't be, having just completed his officer's training, but it was nice to confirm the data.

"An understandable mistake, I believe he intentionally adopted many Alpha mannerisms to ensure he is unquestioned at his job. However, being a beta makes the diplomatic portion of his position easier as most people have to wait for him to open his mouth before finding him offensive."

"What does he do?" John asked. Predictable, boring, but easily exploited for a bit of fun.

"He is the British Government," Sherlock said quietly in a matter-of-fact tone. He sipped the cup in his hand. Cream and sugar in a mild Earl Grey. The other cup had been marked no sugar, and the lack of other marking implied that they were otherwise identical.

"Pull the other one." John's expression pinched into hesitant skepticism.

"Well, perhaps not quite yet, but he is the person the people who are nominally in power go to to get anything done. In another couple years I have no doubt that he will be so indispensable that they don't leave him out of any major decision making," Sherlock explained calmly.

"So, he's in Parliament or...?"

"Decidedly 'or,' John. He would say he occupies a minor position in the British Government. You might take note of the CCTV cameras following us," Sherlock said with a slight chuckle. John was quiet for quite some time after that as they walked along. The series of expressions on John's face was quite interesting as he processed this, turning it all over in his mind and accepting small portions of it as truth at a time until he had decided that none of it was a lie. They were approaching a small park - just a tree with some benches and a bit of grass for kids to run around in - when he spoke up again.

"Do they really still stick to the line that MI6 doesn't technically exist? I thought that all stopped a couple years ago."

"Four years ago it was publicly acknowledged that her majesty has a Secret Service, but the old habits remain. As I understand it, nearly everyone still talks around the existence of the office," Sherlock said with a shrug. He turned to claim the bench furthest from the play area. Thankfully, most children were still at home this early in the morning and the park was currently devoid of tiny humans.

"Well, that actually explains a lot about the pair of you," John said with a sigh. Sherlock looked at him, slightly puzzled, but John was looking off into the distance. "Between now and next Thursday morning, I have a few errands to run and two very important appointments I can't miss, but I'm free other than that. My phone technically can do texts, but it's the cheapest one off the rack and I honestly don't know how to send a proper answer so I'd have to call. I don't have many minutes on it, either. I got it in case they need to call me to reschedule my flight or something like that. I'm not one for sitting around the hotel room, you see, and only got the thing because I missed some messages just before I started Sandhurst and very nearly ended up AWOL on accident. If you want me around I'm willing to tag along to keep you company, or am I misreading things?"

"Considering I wasn't able to remain without your presence for a full hour without contacting you that is a fair assumption," Sherlock said as sarcastically as he could. He had already acted ridiculously needy, he wasn't about to make it worse by sounding that way as well. "However, I doubt my brother will be so idiotic as to attempt that sort of power play again. On the other hand, I do have a few appointments today with potential clients. Two of the four should be quick and simple errands - hardly proper cases at all, but they are paying cash generously and I can't refuse that at the current moment. A bit of backup for the last one would likely save me a bit of grief, but you'll need to be familiar with my methods to be of help during that investigation. So you see, if you want to accompany me then you would need to come along to the earlier appointments."

"You think your last meeting is potentially dangerous?"

"Mildly, but one can never be completely certain of such things. It is possible one of the trifles will reveal a more interesting underlying mystery and end with us chasing down the perpetrator and phoning the police to collect the criminal," Sherlock mused.

"Well, I can hardly say no to that."


	7. In the Wake of Watson

**In the Wake of Watson**

Before John left for his deployment, John gave Sherlock a wallet size of his portrait from graduating Sandhurst, a mailing address for his unit once deployed, and a referral to a clinic that specialized in bonding related injuries. Sherlock knew that there was a risk, if he really was pining away, that he would simply shift from pining for the dead man who attacked him to pining for the Lieutenant. The letters probably didn't help with that. However, without any active attempt at bonding and absent the physical presence of John's pheromones any chemical addition his body might have started to develop swiftly came undone. Whatever emotional component remained was well satisfied with the letters and packed away in the deepest part of his Mind Palace.

The therapists Mycroft hired didn't want to furnish him with copies of his medical documentation because they hadn't been paid in full despite his rights as a patient. The woman was especially livid about the stop payment for her check. He implied heavily that since he hadn't actually signed the consent forms himself and she hadn't attempted to contact him prior to his heat any court of law would classify her behavior as attempted rape no matter who had supposedly hired her. She gave up the scant paperwork she had after that. The man was much more easily convinced, as that appointment hadn't happened yet. Sherlock simply provided him with a formal letter saying he categorically refused any such services until further notice on the grounds that he believed himself to be misdiagnosed and had found a different alpha who suited his actual needs. There were a few others he had to track down, mostly from the private hospital he'd gone to immediately after the incident, and there he had to dance around their collective assumption that he was not competent to handle his own affairs and would need Mycroft's permission to release anything to him.

During the two weeks of blackmailing and sweet-talking paperwork from people who ought to have handed it all over upon his first request, he had multiple appointments at the clinic John sent him to where they assessed him properly. He was put on medications to manage his thyroid so that he wouldn't continue to get worse and taken off the fertility drugs. At best they weren't helping, at worst the fertility drugs would have been overloading his system while his body was already trying its level best to attract his 'missing' alpha. The new drugs made him ravenous, made him sleep more, lowered his blood pressure, and generally reduced his stamina. It was better than slowly wasting away, so he begrudgingly decided to put up with the side effects for the few months it would take to completely convince his stupid transport that the alpha it had started to bond to was not coming back. If nothing got better after four months he'd have to take more drastic measures. As much as his second gender caused him a world of bother, having his misbehaving reproductive organs permanently crippled or removed in full was unattractive. Fundamentally altering himself was a loathsome option he would only entertain if all other methods failed.

Several of his visits to the clinic had him taking what he thought were ridiculous personality tests to probe his instinctual responses. They asked him to imagine different circumstances and had him explain how he would react if this or that happened and even supplied him with various emotionally charged scents and images to react to. The first attempt was disastrous as he found himself incapable of responding in timely fashion or else incapable of properly articulating the instinctual sentiment-laden feelings the stimuli caused. After a couple sessions, he constructed a room in his mind palace to fill with these hypothetical conflicts, allowing himself to become completely immersed in the situation and give proper answers.

The therapists that Mycroft had employed had done nothing wrong on paper, which irked Sherlock something terrible. They had been contracted to do a job, told what was wrong with him, and carried out the task that they had been paid extremely high fees to carry out. Once he finally pried copies of his medical information away from all the people Mycroft had hand selected to care for him, he realized the root cause of the whole problem was the same misconception Sherlock had laughed in his brother's fat face about in the cafe. From the first set of doctors who had tended him after the incident to the mountain of a man who had been contracted to see to Sherlock's next heat, they were all told the same ridiculously incorrect baseline information and acted accordingly. Their fault was in not being able to see past the size of the check coming their way and ignoring all the evidence of their own senses. There was nothing for it in the end, he would either corrected them outright or he'd continue to be treated incorrectly. Therefore, he made it very clear that he was not deluded or mistaken in believing himself to be asexual and was not now suffering from nor had he ever had physical difficulty in that area. He was not asexual, had never thought of himself that way, was not afraid of sex, and did not find it painful or otherwise physically unpleasant. He did have a low sex drive and found the entirety of his heats from the first blush of fever to the relaxing shower at the end to be a chore to endure as efficiently as possible. However, he did have a sex-positive attitude when it came to male alphas and was more than happy to engage in masturbation on the rare occasion he was in the mood.

The key factor in the whole argument was distilled down to his brother arraigning to have the therapists show up only during his heats. It was partially Sherlock's own fault for avoiding doctor's appointments unless he was too ill to function, as he had left the company of those who were more likely to realize he'd been misdiagnosed quickly and not returned. As for the attempts at treatment: Sex with a stranger was not on. No matter what anyone said about pheromones and natural responses, Sherlock realized through the guided visualizations at the clinic that he needed to meet the alpha beforehand and make the decision before his heat began or no amount of coaxing would get him into bed. All negotiations completed before his heat started, no substitutions or changes during, or else he'd get angry and throw them out. The more competent specialists, upon hearing this and reviewing the clinic's findings, said that that wasn't unheard of even if it was rare. They also said it was a behavior that placed him in the asexual spectrum, meaning the person signing their checks could be appeased. He found the word demisexual on a web page when attempting to find more information about his 'condition,' a relatively new term for a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong connection with someone, and asked them to use it in reference to him in the future.

Fortunately for him, or so he thought at the time, his ability to deduce so much of a person's life at a glance would make this much easier on him. All he had to do was find an alpha he didn't find distasteful and make explicitly clear what he was and was not interested in happening during his heat, much the same as the arrangement he'd thought he'd made at the start of the whole mess. He tried setting up a new appointment with the male therapist he'd told to take a hike, but after spending a couple hours with the man he realized that he would never willingly touch the brainless oaf. When he started looking for a therapist on his own a pattern quickly emerged in the list of men he'd gathered and he burned the notebook he'd been using for fear of Mycroft getting his hands on it and noticing.

It was at this point, a full six months after the man had left England, that Sherlock realized he was interested in having sex with John.


	8. At War with Assumption

**At War with Assumption**

Sherlock tried not to think of the day John left, or at least not of the substance of it. John had departed dressed smartly in uniform, leaving with a number of fellow soldiers via commercial aircraft in what was clearly a bit of low-key pageantry on the government's part. Let the common people see the soldiers all decked out as they walk through Heathrow to sit at the front of a short flight, then pack them into military transport in an allied country for the bulk of their trip. The uniform looked wonderful on him, properly tailored so there was no lumpy fabric to distract from his compact, masculine frame. Despite their acquaintance never progressing past very pleasant snuggling, Sherlock often caught himself thinking of the shape of John's body often.

Their relationship was only friendly. Sherlock didn't want sex. At least, he hadn't wanted sex during the time frame that John was available. The attention was still delicious. John peppered him with compliments and marveled at how quickly Sherlock could solve his client's problems. From that first night at the hotel to John's plane lifting off, he'd only left the soldier's side when he absolutely had to. He'd even followed John to one of his appointments, curious as to what could be so important, and picked at a substandard curry while listening to the conversation John was having with his alcoholic sister slowly spiral out of control. His earlier appointment, which he'd let Sherlock tag along to on the condition that he wait in the bank's lobby, had been to purchase savings certificates almost amounting to every pound to his name. He'd also signed documents to lock down his finances to a very thrifty daily maximum so that Harriet Watson couldn't dip her fingers into any of John's savings the next time her booze money ran out. She didn't take it well when she asked for a loan and he explained why he didn't have anything to spare. Harry made her problems out to be partially John's responsibility, all the while insisting that she was reformed while drinking two servings of a rather strong cocktail for 2 in the afternoon. She started implying then outright stating that John was a bad little brother for not trusting his elder sibling when she said she wouldn't steal from his accounts for a third time. Her angry outbursts and John's equally hostile retorts eventually got them kicked out of the restaurant, leaving Sherlock to ponder if he and Mycroft were perhaps not the worst siblings in the British Isles.

Sherlock popped out from an alleyway a couple blocks away, lying convincingly about having taken lunch at a nearby cafe and honestly moaning about how terrible the quality was. He distracted John by running through his progress in devising a system that would let him deduce the quality of the food at any given London eatery without actually entering it. It was still very much a work in progress, but he had noted several ways of identifying places that were bad enough to routinely make people feel ill. Somewhere between his breakdown of how to assess different McDonald's franchises and a rundown of red flags for Chinese fast food John started to smile again.

Over the course of the year John was deployed, when he was feeling particularly cynical, Sherlock supposed he was fully funding his mailman's salary all on his own. The amount of mail that came and went was rather extreme when he thought about it in bulk, but John's parting declaration that Sherlock should write him as often as he wanted had not been recanted no matter how many letters were sent out overseas. Thanks to the distance and circumstance it was usual for multiple letters to arrive at once, and more than once Sherlock had to correct the order of events for John, but it worked out well enough even with that minor annoyance. Sitting down to write out his day seemed tedious at first and he hadn't intended to write so frequently, but he found that his mind palace needed less direct maintenance after composing a letter and the regular replies John sent were worth the effort. They often included insights Sherlock had glossed over and helpful (if bewildering and tedious to implement) advise for dealing with his clients more politely. They would be perfect if only there were more of them, and the stationary set Sherlock sent with enough envelopes for three letters a week through the end of his current tour ought to have been hint enough in that direction. The very rare occasions when John could use email or the private section of 's bulletin board for instantaneous communication were cherished. A phone call was not tactically advantageous, as John could trade away his spot in the phone queue for a number of favors to make his self-imposed financial limitations more comfortable and Sherlock preferred text communication anyway, so Sherlock made it clear that calling him directly would be a waste of resources.

When John had left, looking smart in his crisply pressed tan uniform and cap, Sherlock had purchased some cocaine. He stared at it for a good hour before putting it into the leather case where he stashed his needles and starting a letter to John instead that picked up where their conversation that morning left off. The letters didn't usually give him the same rush that talking to John did, but he couldn't always predict if writing a specific letter would give him that rush or not. It was a bit of a gamble, but paid out often enough to keep him at it. He would sometimes write out the letters as transcriptions of conversations he'd had with John in his mind palace. John seemed to find something about that a little concerning, but he always made it clear that whatever it was about those letters that he found a bit 'not good' he also wanted Sherlock to keep writing to him 'honestly as you have been and without censorship' and then would make corrections to his part of the dialog whenever he felt Sherlock was in error. The version of John in his mind palace improved in quality dramatically.

Two months in, a couple letters Sherlock received cost him a week of decreased productivity until he took a few hits and sorted himself out. John wanted to know if Sherlock considered them a couple, or if they were just friends. Sherlock had replied with a reminder that they not done anything sexual and he was not interested in bonding with anyone. It was not his area, he was on a prescription that was handling his thyroid, and was handling his heats alone the way he used to without any obvious medical consequences (though he was not trusting enough to mention his self-medication.) The letter that really set the world on its side was the second, which mentioned that there were some rather nice beta women at the camp that had been trying to get John's attention and he had turned them down. He mentioned that he should have an hour on the Internet-capable recreation computer coming up and it wouldn't effect their relationship as it was if Sherlock was sure about what he'd said in the first letter on the subject, but otherwise they could talk about it on the forum. The only decisive thought relating to that which Sherlock could think about without his mind crashing into a cascade of nonsense requiring him to reach for his needle was that he did not want to talk about any such thing on the forum. He posted on the message board "No need to further discuss anything on that subject" in large, bold text and promptly moved forward as if none of it had happened.

Slowly, Sherlock got himself sorted out. His graduation came and went, and he suffered through the pageantry of the ceremony for his parent's sake. He moved into a flat on Montague Street so that he could start working as a private detective full time rather than just on weekends. After four months, he was off the thyroid medication. His blood panels were much closer to the average baseline for an omega his age. His doctoral studies started up another month after that, their approval slightly delayed by his illness. At six months he was looking for a suitable therapist to take care of him, at eight months he found one. The man was tolerable, small, dark-skinned, and educated. They met four times beforehand. Kevin misunderstood what Sherlock explained of his situation to mean that he'd been traumatized horrifically by his first three alphas and abandoned by another, but at least the gross misunderstanding left him at the same logical endpoint with regard to Sherlock's need to be in control of the situation. The doctors let him to go back on suppressants after that, though Kevin made it clear that he'd keep his schedule clear if Sherlock needed him back.

Demisexual was a new word, but not a new concept. The Ace community was becoming more of a thing thanks to the internet making it easier for minority groups to organize. While women who identified as demi were often seen as acting prudish, men were dismissed as being overemotional or faking being queer for attention. Even some so-called 'Real Aces' were hostile to the gray-sexual groups. He did find a few corners of the internet where demisexuals, mostly betas, talked about their situation and experiences in a way that was clinical and matter-of-fact enough for his taste. There were a lot of new words popping up to describe various sexual proclivities, and he researched these groups on his laptop while waiting on cultures to develop or blood stains to set. It was an interesting dive into the collective psychology of the English-speaking world as there was finally a way for enough like-minded people to get together, talk, and develop niche vocabulary to explain things that had previously been too taboo to speak of outside of some twisted metaphor. Hetero-alpha-sexuals were those who dated alphas of the opposing primary gender, a gynophilic woman only wanted to date other women no matter their secondary gender, and a homo-romantic omega-sexual was only romantically attracted to their own primary gender yet could be sexually attracted to omegas of any gender, and on down the rabbit hole of new language. It was surprisingly precise and scientific with how the root words were being used to produce the new compound terms, quickly replacing the messy slang that was based in outdated metaphors and insulting anecdotes in many on-line forums with matter of fact statements that could not be misunderstood. Sherlock added an extensive glossary of terms to his own website, complete with related charts and tables for finding the correct terminology for any possible orientation.


	9. Being Hated by Sally Donovan

**Being Hated by Sally Donovan**

Molly Hooper started working at Bart's morgue as a medical examiner eleven months after John left. They met while he was performing an experiment on the battered corpse of a traffic victim that had him documenting the progress of certain cultures of bacteria on lacerated skin every hour for twelve hours. She was a bit nose-blind, mistaking Sherlock for a beta now that he was back on his usual suppressants despite spending most of her shift in his company. He would have greatly preferred to carry out his study of bacteria cultures in decomposing tissue at an actual body farm, but so far he had been denied that request either on the basis of his secondary gender or past opiate use eleven times. Still, he could restrict his experiment to cold-weather conditions that the lab's fridge simulated and the data would still be useful in the UK most of the year. Miss Hooper was quite interested in the research he was doing into differentiating the minutia of forensic observation. There were already baselines for decomposition in general terms, but nailing down subtle differences could make the entire process more precise. Most of his experiments were designed to narrow the window of uncertainty so that people like Miss Hooper could confidently state which hour a given person died in instead of having to work with a four-hour margin of error or worse. She became quite helpful and promised to call him first whenever a body on her slab was donated to science.

D.I. Lestrade came to see Sherlock a week after he'd started the cultures at Barts, asking if he was clean and ready to work. They had met while Sherlock was high as a kite, with Sherlock solving a murder while sobering up in the drunk tank. He'd solved a few more cases for him in the interim by looking through the official reports as both an incentive and reward for going through rehab. The alpha was hesitant to use Sherlock's skills, though unlike most others Sherlock's second gender wasn't the primary issue. Sherlock had his drug use completely under control and was 'clean' in the sense that he never left his own bedroom while intoxicated. As an Omega, even the police were obliged to use caution when entering his nesting area and he could leave a note on his door indicating 'heat' or 'nesting' and be completely undisturbed by all but the most persistent annoyances of the outside world until the high wore off. In any case, Sherlock wouldn't cause any evidence to be thrown out of court because nobody would ever see him get high again, so what Lestrade didn't know wouldn't hurt anyone. He was clean enough to work, and had started pestering Lestrade about cases he saw on the news as soon as he got off his thyroid medication. He had a _clean bill of health_. Since that was the exact phrasing the Detective Inspector had originally used when he told Sherlock to get back to him about consulting, that was the standard Sherlock would hold to.

"You look a damn sight better then the last time I saw you, Holmes," Lestrade said as he entered the morgue. A dark-skinned woman Sherlock didn't recognize came in after him in a crisp uniform. Sherlock looked up from the now disembodied thigh he'd been studying. Once the bacteria got settled in he'd been forced to dismember the body to prevent cross contamination due to being stored in an enclosed space. An unforeseen but easily rectified complication due to only having one cadaver at his disposal and twelve bacteria cultures ready for application. "Uh, I hadn't heard of a dismembered corpse anywhere in London."

"There wasn't one. I dismembered this man for an experiment," Sherlock said simply. He finished slicing a sample so that he could examine the decomposing tissue under the microscope. The woman - freshly promoted, beta, two lovers: both male alphas (a tricky situation to maintain, must be clever,) stickler for regulations, eager to please her new boss - looked disgusted.

"Sir, when you said you wanted to bring in an expert to help with the case, what sort of expert were you talking about?" the woman asked.

"Sergeant Sally Donovan, this is Mr. Sherlock Holmes. He has a unique skill-set allowing him to locate overlooked avenues of inquiry, and has helped the department previously," Lestrade said formally, which was as vague as possible and clearly unsatisfactory.

"Sergeant Donovan, I am a performing a doctoral study and have degrees in organic chemistry and forensics," Sherlock elaborated. "I would expect someone in your line of work to be less squeamish."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure normal people get a bit upset when someone is going around cutting up corpses on a lark," Donovan said.

"What?" Molly's voice came through the door just before she did, carrying two cups of coffee. "I am so sorry, I triple checked the paperwork on Mr. Antar before the autopsy. I know it was against his religion, but the family gave permission due to the circumstances as long as he was presentable and the funeral wasn't delayed. We were as respectful as possible and made the deadline we were given. I have copies! Oh, I know I kept extra copies..."

"They aren't here from the mosque," Sherlock said. Molly was quite useful to have around, but he needed a steady hand to set up the slides and her nervous energy was distracting. "The sergeant was simply expressing distaste for this line of work generally."

"What? Why?" Molly asked.

"That... that isn't what I meant!" Donovan sputtered. "Who are you?"

"Ladies, please," Lestrade tried and failed to defuse tensions.

"I run this morgue," Molly said, putting down the coffees. It didn't come across as strongly as she clearly intended it to, but then she was a mousy sort of person most of the time.

"You do not," Donovan shot back. Sherlock huffed at the blatant sexism, and from another female beta in an alpha's profession no less. Hypocrisy was clearly not a problem for the sergeant.

"Yes, I do I... I was just hired on when Doctor Mallard retired."

"You let your boyfriend just play about in here, then?"

"Was something improper reported? Is that why you're here?"

"That's what I'm asking you, are you letting this freak cut people up on a lark?"

"Quiet!" Sherlock bellowed. When all three of the other people whipped around to stare at him holding the last of the extremely thin and easily destroyed samples just above a slide, he added: "Turn around, you're putting me off."

"Oh, _we're_ putting _you_ off?" Donovan started up again. Molly reached out to tap the quick-tempered police officer on the shoulder.

"Any paperwork you need, I can get you if you just follow me into my office," Molly said at a reasonable volume.

"We aren't here for paperwork," Lestrade finally got a word in. "There has been a series of assaults and the latest one turned deadly. The flat was locked and the security system armed, no sign of B&E. We came to ask for help."

"Well, as soon as the body gets here I'll have a look, but I can't really say anything until then. Is the deceased coming just behind?"

"Actually I wanted Sherlock's opinion," Lestrade said, shuffling his feet awkwardly.

"Oh, I, um..." Molly straightened her shirt and fiddled with the pen in her pocket. "Like the private detective work he does? I didn't realize he was looking for a job at the police department. I, well, I sort of assumed we'd be working together here once he finished his thesis." At long last the slide was set and stained properly. He pulled off his goggles and tossed them on the table.

"I am not looking to work for the Met directly," Sherlock said. He walked over to Molly and offered her the slides. "Lock these up for me, chilled, or photograph them if you have the time, I don't imagine Detective Lestrade wants to wait around for an hour while I examine them."

"Of course, Sherlock," Molly said. There were a couple spots of color on her face. Donovan must have really gotten to her. Well, the sergeant seemed like an easily detestable person. No sense in wasting manners on someone like that, not when the inefficiency involved in extended pleasantries was already a burdensome hassle. "I'll get them photographed for you, well, unless something urgent comes through, but it is rather dead in here. Ha ha! Don't worry about the rest of Mr. Smythe either, I'll get all of him back in the cooler so you can... deal with whatever these people need." Molly, on the other hand, made herself immensely useful in exchange for relatively efficient expressions of appreciation.

"That is most helpful, Miss Hooper," Sherlock said with a smile. He walked over to the large sink, calling to the D.I. over his shoulder. "Lestrade, if you text me the address I'll be right behind after I wash up."

"Department rules: I have to bring you with me if you want into the scene," Lestrade said.

"In a police car? No." Sherlock said flatly.

"Yes, in a police car, as that's the car I'm driving."

"What functional difference is there to me arriving in a cab?"

"It's the difference between you getting a look at the scene in person or getting a look at the photos in my office hours after the fact. Forensics is already on the scene, so we're on the clock." Sherlock finished washing his hands and turned to look at the D.I. He immediately saw that there would be no concessions to practicality or appeals to logic, it would be strict procedure this first time or not at all. At least, as strict as it could be for someone who could not be officially on the payroll because they were an omega, but had been added to the list of approved expert consultants and street informants via convoluted means. Technically, that level of clearance only gave him the ability to be involved in confidential police affairs as a consult using files shown to him while inside the Detective Inspector's office, not to physically visit active crime scenes, but the work he had done for Lestrade so far made it clear that Sherlock's strength lie in finding relevant details that others overlook. Their forensic photographers wouldn't take close-up shots of something they considered irrelevant and he couldn't always do anything with the angles that had been captured of some intriguing detail lost to the crime scene clean-up service, as no court case would succeed on such poor quality evidence unless he followed the lead to something concrete that hadn't been swept away or chucked in a bin. If he wanted to do the job he had to be useful, and to be useful he had to be on-scene. Well, surely he could handle the ride for the sake of ensuring his career wouldn't consist of one petty marital dispute after another ad infinitum.

"Fine, I just need to stop off at my locker," Sherlock sighed. The employee use locker with his leather jacket was just down the hall, though when he got there he realized a rather distinctive smell was following him so he also grabbed a spare T-shirt out of the pile he kept. Donovan and Lestrade followed him into the prep room. Sherlock wasn't normally shy and frequently cleaned up in front of the other male employees and students in the prep room, but Lestrade was an alpha, Donovan was female, and they needed to do things according to all the proper procedures with no hints of anything that could jeopardize his first time out as an unofficial official consultant. He paused and gave them a pointed look. When no hints were taken he waved the shirt at them. "Do you want me showing up at your crime scene smelling of week-old cadaver and bacteria cultures?" Donovan rolled her eyes to look up at the ceiling.

"Not particularly," Lestrade said, turning to look at the safety posters on the wall. He pointed at one that listed out the regulations for face masks. "Shouldn't you have been wearing some of this for whatever you were doing?"

"Do you wear a mask walking down the street? The bacteria I am studying is commonly found throughout London, cultivated from samples taken from various industrial, residential, and commercial environments. It would not cause illness in anyone with a properly functioning immune system," Sherlock answered as he swapped the 'Classical Music Kicks Ass' T-Shirt he was wearing for one with 'The Periodic Table As Seen By an Organic Chemist' emblazoned on the front. He wasn't dressed at all like a professional, but he didn't live in a suit the way Mycroft did. A studded cloth belt, leather jacket, and distressed jeans were the best he had to hand as the rest of the spare clothing in the locker had been chosen on the assumption that he would have spilled something vile on himself and require maximum comfort after spending time under the emergency shower. He would not have his first official consult performed in lounge wear. "None of it is an airborne hazard, aside from the smell. That was one of the less pungent ones, or you'd be insisting I shower. If we are to continue with this arrangement after today, sending me a text with an address would be most efficient even if you must collect me from some nearby location instead of meeting me at the scene itself. It would also ensure I'm dressed for work rather than comfort when I arrive. I'm assuming you got my location from Mycroft?"

"I was under orders to get permission before bringing you in the first time," Lestrade said, a bit of irritation in his voice. "I got the green light and was told you were putting in a few hours here."

"I am not his pet," Sherlock spat. He sprayed a medical-grade odor neutralizer all over himself and finished dressing before chucking his used clothing in and slamming the locker shut. Such neutralizers were mostly used by Omegas near their heat, but he found they worked quite well on corpse stink.

"An omega forensics expert?" Donovan might have a difficult personality, but at least she wasn't blind and stupid.

"That would be one of the primary reasons I am not employed by NSY," Sherlock said plainly and without venom. He wrapped a scarf firmly around his neck and started toward the door.

"But they let you work in the morgue," she questioned.

"'They' most certainly do not let me do anything," Sherlock scoffed. "Those willing to work in a morgue are always in short supply, but even so beta women and omegas are discouraged from supposedly tainted work despite modern facilities being quite clean. Note that this is a teaching hospital and I am a student. The social rules for education and research are quite different than the practical application of such knowledge. An omega may, in our modern and enlightened society, study anything to satisfy their curiosity. However, should one dare try to apply their skills to a trade that is not suitable according to social norms the door is often shut in their face. I've found a loophole in the system and have no qualms exploiting it. My doctoral studies should last me approximately the rest of my life given the wide scope I have laid out before me. Should my studies bear fruit and earn me a PhD for one or another of the experiments I have planned, I will simply move on to another point of intersection of organic chemistry, biology, and forensic analysis - which is practically the entirety of forensic analysis depending on how you choose to look at it." As he talked they left the building. The police car was parked quite close to the exit. Sherlock took a large breath as they approached and continued talking to try and keep his mind busy.

"As for the practical experience I will require in order to shape my experiments in ways that will be useful outside of laboratory conditions, I have employed myself as a private investigator. This is also how I earn the money I need to support myself, which is preferable to having to do something tedious and unrelated to my field. So far I have a cultivated a small following among the military community."

"Military?" Lestrade interrupted, "Here I thought you hated getting help from your brother."

"I absolutely do not take client referrals from him under any circumstances," Sherlock said, dropping into the back seat in a huff. The effect was somewhat dampened by his reluctance to get into the vehicle, one long leg hanging out to prevent the door from shutting. "I suppose there is no chance of swapping for the front seat?"

"Not on your life," Donovan chuckled, packing in. "So you do what, exactly, for the military?"

"Not for the military, for military personnel. It is not much different from what any other young police officer has to deal with. I track down stolen items of great personal yet limited monetary value, locate misplaced spouses, lost pets on the condition that they give me a nonrefundable down payment before I'll hear the first detail of their case, sort out who is at fault between antagonistic neighbors, and every other petty thing that needs solved right now before their next deployment. The police in a major city are often too busy with bigger issues to deal with such things in a timely manner or give them the sort of attention my clients think their troubles deserve," Sherlock said, trying to minimize his fidgeting as Lestrade navigated traffic. "It is all quite beneath my skill level, but that is the work that is available. I also assist the innocent in more complex cases on occasion, hunting down evidence to support their alibi or else point the police in the correct direction."

"Oh, you did a good job on that murder case last month," Lestrade said sardonically. "I heard you got your client convicted."

"I did, of housebreaking on the opposite side of London at the time of the murder he was accused of committing. Angelo is in prison, and will remain there a few short years, but at least he wont hang for a crime he didn't commit," Sherlock said proudly. "The police got their man and no miscarriage of justice was done."

"You don't care you got your client convicted?" Donovan asked.

"He was guilty. Perhaps you would be surprised at the remarkable number of guilty people looking to hire someone to find evidence that someone else committed a crime, but I certainly wasn't. If I never reported any of the evidence I found in those cases simply because it looked bad for my client I would have a good deal more money, but that has always been irrelevant."

"Oh, Saint Sherlock Holmes would rather do good than get paid, then?" Donovan teased. She didn't seem as hostile as she had been previously, but it was hard to tell when his mind kept trying to slide back into memory. He had been momentarily distracted, but it was hard to keep focus. The last time he'd been in a police car had been after the incident, and the previous times he'd been coked out of his mind or gripped by horrible hallucinations brought on by the illegal heat suppressants. Nervous energy zipped through him, his legs jiggling and his fingers tapping on the worn seat next to him.

"Only lazy people who feel guilty about their sloth are ashamed to admit they have plenty of money. One or two lost commissions won't effect my finances, so why should I let it effect my integrity?" Sherlock said.

"You alright back there, Holmes?" Lestrade asked.

"I'd prefer Sherlock," Sherlock said, fidgeting uncontrollably. "Mr. Holmes sounds entirely too old, don't you agree?"

"Alright, Sherlock, but you're squirming around like something is wrong," Lestrade said, turning around at a stoplight to give the lanky young man a once-over.

"I already made it clear that I detest police cars." Sherlock said, realizing that his attempts to control his breathing were beginning to fail, his instincts demanding he use his nose instead of his mouth despite knowing that that would only amplify his distress. "It stinks of alpha back here."

"Thanks for that," the alpha D.I. spat, turning around so he could continue to drive.

"If he is that close to a heat, maybe we should take him home?" Donovan asked.

"What?" the two barked out in surprised unison.

"Between the morgue and the neutralizer nobody will smell anything on him, but if he's that twitchy because of some strange alpha smell then how is he going to handle the scene? More than half the force is alpha," the Sargeant explained, sounding like she was being perfectly reasonable despite being completely wrong about everything.

"Don't be moronic. The doors don't open from the inside," Sherlock pointed out.

"Sherlock, do you need us to drop you off somewhere safe?" the D.I. asked, concern lacing his voice. "We can handle this one and give you a call on the next case after you've settled."

"Stop being stupid and think! You would have been able to smell my heat in the morgue before I'd used the neutralizer, and well before that I'd have been stopped at the door and sent home by security, don't be ridiculous. My heat isn't for weeks. Mycroft would have never given you permission to collect me otherwise."

"Well calm down and stop acting like you need to go hide in your nest, then." Donovan huffed.

"I'll calm down when I am out of this cage!" Sherlock stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking for something to distract himself with since conversation was not an option. He'd been thinking of his phone, but the crisp feeling of quality paper caught his attention. He'd read John's most recent letter twice already, but he pulled it out and put his nose inside the envelope. A string of expletives flew out of Lestrade's mouth, but Sherlock tuned out the other - not mine, not important - alpha and focused his sharp senses on the lingering fresh scent of John. He must have had it in his inner pocket for quite some time before being able to post the letter for so much of the scent to have absorbed into the paper. He blinked out of the calming haze when the door of the car opened and he was yanked out onto the pavement by a livid pair of police officers.

"What the fuck are you thinking, doing coke in the back of my patrol car!?" Lestrade shouted at him.

"I, you, what?" Sherlock mumbled as his brain rebooted.

"Give me that," Donovan said as she snatched the envelope from him. "The hell?"

"That is private correspondence!" Sherlock shouted, surging up to stand even as Lestrade was manhandling him into cuffs.

"There's no powder in here, boss." John's letter was pulled out of the envelope. Lestrade grabbed it, wafting alpha anger toward where Sherlock was caught between the car door and the two police officers. The scent on the letter would be ruined.

"The return address is military." Donovan pointed out the obvious.

"He's a doctor. We met after the... incident," Sherlock tried to explain. "I was just sniffing the paper."

"What incident?" Donovan demanded. Lestrade looked equally puzzled, looking up from John's letter. He wouldn't have read much past John's medical opinion on Sherlock's latest round of theories on how traumatic injury effects the decision making of the common criminal.

"I... You don't know? How do you not know? Mycroft has been more than happy to ensure all my handlers know how short they need to keep my leash and why, as if I'm not an adult capable of doing things on my own..." Lestrade cut off Sherlock's rant.

"He didn't tell me anything about any incident, and I'm not your handler. So what's this about?" Suddenly faced with the need to explain, from the top and without having to overcome previous meddling, exactly what happened to him Sherlock found himself at a loss. He blinked open-mouthed for a moment, then straightened a bit.

"Some warning that I was finally being allowed some autonomy would have been nice," Sherlock muttered as he constructed and discarded a dozen different ways to approach the topic. "Rape, abuse, neglect, abandonment, transactional."

"Pardon?"

"Descriptions of interactions with alphas, and yes I do think that is plenty of information for you to be getting on with. You know this line of work, there are risks and I don't have the luxury of backup. The back seat stinks of disgruntled alpha and the doors do not open from the inside. I've been in vehicles and rooms that do not allow free exit from the inside several times in the past, and all of those instances are detestable. I knew that, and the last time I was in a police car was after the worst of it, so I didn't anticipate enjoying a ride in one. The letter is... from a friend. A safe scent; the doctor who properly diagnosed the condition I had been forced to self-medicate to manage due to Mycroft being chronically wrong about everything in my life," Sherlock said quietly. There were a few gawkers hanging around to entertain themselves and it was none of their business what his private life was like. "I have since been able to get actual treatment, and have a clean bill of health properly documented as required of me before I would be allowed to consult for New Scotland Yard."

"You were sick," Donovan summarized, "and think that makes it alright that you were getting coked out of your mind?" Sherlock looked at her, hating her for not being able to focus on the relevant facts or deduce the general shape of things without prying.

"Taking opiates for relief from a physical condition is quite common and effective, if unfortunately addictive. My doctors had been misinformed about certain relative details of my life and told to disregard certain of my complaints because I was considered some flavor of delusional due to being beyond the standard deviation from the mean in some perfectly natural but rare respects that are exceedingly personal. So yes, self-medication was my only option for a time and it went badly." Sherlock arbored having to say so many words that meant nothing much at all, but he did not want to discuss any details with this harpy.

"That's really sick," Donovan said with a shake of her head, though her posture did not indicate her level of aggression had decreased.

"The condition could have been fatal, yes, though that is no longer a concern. I am very much able to work. Was it really necessary to cuff me because I was in possession of a particularly heavily scented piece of paper?"

"Sorry, just, it looked like you were..." Lestrade started to say. Unnecessary, sloppy, unfocused, irrational idiots, the pair of them.

"I know what you thought I was doing, which is utterly moronic. How can you possibly function when your ability to reason is stunted to the point of near nonexistence?" Sherlock raised his voice as the cuffs came off. "An omega taking some comfort in the scent of a trusted alpha in a stressful situation is hardly unusual and should have been the first thing that came to your mind if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention. Snorting anything would damage my sense of smell over time and inhibit my ability to work, not just as a detective but in the lab. Contrary to popular belief, there are times it is perfectly reasonable and even necessary to sniff the science, and being able to identify compounds present at certain stages - either to confirm that everything is as expected or take action before an unwanted reaction can get any momentum - is often critical to efficient prep work and sterilization techniques. On top of that is the powerful instinctual need to smell their surroundings present in all unbonded omegas, making it statistically unlikely that any omega would snort drugs even after bonding. Obviously, my drug use was always intravenous and I would have to be completely insane to take an illicit substance while in the back of a police car my the first day working with you. Now, tell me where the crime scene is and I will meet you there, as there is no force on the planet that will get me back into this stinking cesspit masquerading as a mode of transport." Sherlock snatched the letter back, loudly and aggressively sniffing at the rumpled stationary like a hound at a foxhole. Lestrade's anger and disappointment was writ large upon one side of the paper and a smaller corner stank of Donovan's beta indignation, but the thick stationary still held a wisp of John's pleased scent along one crease. It wasn't nearly strong enough to help. He tucked it back into its envelope. "This is ruined."

"A known addict gets all twitchy and shoves his nose in something, then goes unresponsive? Yeah, we're going to make a few assumptions," Donovan said nastily, her spine ramrod straight in offense. "The only unreasonable person here is you."

"I told you at the start I did not want you to put me in a police car," Sherlock pointed out. "If you could use your brain for anything other than ensuring your two lovers never find out about each other it would be obvious."

"You don't know a single fucking thing about me!"

"I know plenty; the evidence is all right there on you. Anyone can see it if they bother to look!"

Lestrade stepped forward, putting himself between the two younger people, his hand waving to block line-of-sight. "You didn't say it was a PTSD trigger," the alpha said calmly, his deep inhalations assessing Sherlock while he turned to address his subordinate. "Sergeant, if you are finished antagonizing the man for having a panic attack you can take the car to the scene. I'll escort Mr. Holmes in a cab, either to the scene or home if he can't calm down, all by the book." Donovan visibly pulled herself together with a deep breath and shiver of restrained emotion.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but an alpha officer escorting an omega in distress without a chaperone is anything but by the book," She countered. "Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"Not in this instance," Lestrade said diplomatically. "It isn't just police procedure we have to follow, there's other laws and rules to balance out as well, and in this case PTSD means the DDA trumps the rest. I get that you stick to the handbook, and that makes you a good cop most of the time, but you need to back down and cool off. This was just a misunderstanding and you are taking it personally, so I can't let you escort. At least this should answer your question about why an omega would get involved in forensics. A good chunk of the force wanted the job because some asshole did them wrong, so it is nothing unusual."


	10. Antagonizing Anderson was an Accident

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A/N: Due to some weirdness that happened to chapters 6-9 I have re-uploaded them. They should be readable now instead of a mess of code. My apologies, my computer forgot how to RTF for a moment.

* * *

**Antagonizing Anderson was an Accident, not a Murder**

An accident. Not a murder, not even part of an altercation of any kind, but a simple accident caused by poorly installed track lighting on a middle class omega's ceiling. A shock startled the man while he was changing the light, causing him to lose his balance on the rolling chair he'd been stood on and go flying right out of the large window to land six stories below on the pavement. The door was locked and there was no evidence that the suspect had been in the room at the time because there hadn't been anyone in the room at the time. The alpha woman suspected of harassing a number of omegas in the neighborhood was heavily autistic with very limited mental depth. Her beta carer wasn't very diligent about monitoring her behavior during the day. Most notably, she was prone to shouting when experiencing strong emotion of any kind, including regret which Sherlock confirmed by deliberately flinching any time she raised her voice while he was speaking to her. The worse she felt the louder she got until Sherlock dropped the act and pulled himself back up straight and tall to tell her he understood she wasn't doing it on purpose. After several moments detailing all the reasons why it wasn't her fault she couldn't speak quietly and how he knew she had been working in the communal garden all morning, she calmed down enough to understand that he didn't think she had hurt any of her neighbors.

"You aren't upset with me?" she asked cautiously, her voice at a much more manageable volume. At least, it was manageable until her gratitude swelled into happiness that she'd found an omega who didn't demand she shut up and go away immediately. "Thank you sO much! You are sO SWEET! SWEET omega, underSTANDING ALL THE CONFUSING THINGS. I LIKE TO MAKE THE FLOWERS GROW PRETTY. DO YOU LIKE FLOWERS? I CAN GET YOU PRETTY FLOWERS. I MAKE THEM BLOOM EVEN WHEN THE SKY IS DARK AND COLD."

It took another few minutes for the autistic alpha's carer to get her back to work in a rundown little greenhouse on one side of the garden, explaining that it was the best way to calm (and therefore quiet) the alpha. Lestrade sent a patrolman to ensure they didn't leave the premises while they continued the investigation. Sherlock went inside and sat down on one of the two battered seats in the estate lobby. He pulled up one leg to steady the clipboard Lestrade had shoved into his hands and started to fill out the necessary forms detailing his observations of the scene and the alpha so that she could be properly cleared. He rubbed his temple with his left hand to shoo away the ringing in his ears, annoyed by how obviously not a murder the situation turned out to be. It was a waste of his time, and he had slides to process back at Bart's. After a few minutes he was sought out by the forensic lead.

"What about these?" Phil Anderson, a weaselly looking alpha said, holding up little evidence bags with fibers and soil in them. "The fibers match her scarf and the soil was tracked in from the garden. The rest of the flat is spotless, the victim kept his nest cleaner than an operating room."

"You can't know the fibers match her scarf from an un-enhanced visual inspection alone," Sherlock challenged. "Spend the extra seconds it takes to pull out a magnifying glass of sufficient power and you will see that those are cheap synthetic fibers and the gardener's scarf is very clearly expensive wool, likely a gift given her limited means."

"The soil, then?" the forensic technician prompted. "The victim's kitchen counter has three types of allergy medications sitting by the coffee pot. He certainly wasn't getting near any flowers. If she'd never been in the flat then why is there potting soil tracked across the floor." Anderson must not be completely brainless if he put that together. He was certainly doing a lot better than most of the others on hand, and Sherlock smiled up at him a moment at the pleasure of meeting someone who, while perhaps a touch lazy and certainly in a rush to get everything bagged before engaging his brain to sort out what it all meant, was at least not intellectually crippled. Rather than just repeating dumbly that there had been repeat reports of harassment or insisting that it 'looked like the poor omega got knocked out of the window' and running with that assumption, Anderson had been steadily documenting trace evidence and looking for something concrete to build a theory of the case on.

"Quite right about the allergies, they must have been severe for him to keep both his regular and backup pills out like that as well as carrying an epi-pen in his pocket even while doing basic home maintenance. That, or overly paranoid. Perhaps he'd had a recent scare. The fertile soil is there for the same reason the length of the stride indicated by the pattern of dirt on the carpet belongs to someone with much longer legs than the victim: it was tracked in last night by an alpha at least ten centimeters taller and a great deal heavier than the gardener, a true giant of a person to be certain. Didn't you document the used condom in the bathroom bin? There is a layer of tissue over it, but the scent was quite obvious even though neutralizer was sprayed all over the flat." Anderson sputtered a moment, then spoke into his radio to get one of the techs still working upstairs to check the bathroom garbage for a condom.

"Given that the alpha he slept with last night also works with plants - not with potted ones, though, that sample likely came from a lawn and not from the greenhouse out back, completely the wrong texture - it is possible that the victim has been exposed to allergens accidentally several times during their acquaintance. The tracked soil heads toward to the bathroom instead of the living area before it becomes too faint to detect, and it is possible they have negotiated a system where the alpha immediately showered upon arrival to ensure their evening wasn't spoiled by anaphylaxis. Alternately, he went straight into the bedroom as soon as he arrived, in which case we're looking at a quick hookup and I don't need to hurry to get out of here before there is a bereaved alpha sniffing around full of overflowing instincts and seeking a target for them." Anderson gave Sherlock a wry grin, no doubt imagining the huge alpha Sherlock described weeping like a babe into Sherlock's leather coat or - even worse - reflexively asking him if he was hungry or needed anything every ten seconds. He hated it when alphas tried to feed him, and after any length of time in his company they invariably did. Well, he hated it except when one alpha fed him, but he was half the world away and Sherlock needed to focus.

"How can you tell neutralizer was sprayed, you are a walking cloud of it yourself," Anderson said, jabbing an accusing finger at Sherlock. "It contaminated the scent evidence as soon as you walked in." Sherlock finally looked at the man properly instead of just the evidence in his hands, taking in the tilt of his body and the flush on his face. Well, damn. He did not need this complication while he was working.

"The neutralizer I use is a medical-grade prescription formula with no added perfume, and not used to cover the scent of impending heat or clandestine encounters." The clear disappointment in the man's face was off-putting. "As most of my work is in the morgue and lab handling corpses and samples that are anything but fresh, you are fee to thank me for not bringing the stink of month-old bacteria cultures or oozing decomposition with me and rendering half your team nose-blind to anything biological. The neutralizer sprayed through the flat was a much weaker household product with a distinct baby-powder scent, quite common for single omegas who feel like their biological clock is ticking and want to subtly influence their alpha to get on with it already. Surely you had ample time to properly document the scent of the scene before I arrived? It is the first on the procedure listing for good reason, after all. So many subtle nuances are lost soon after a closed room is filled with a team of investigators."

"Well, I wasn't first on the scene," Anderson said, fidgeting a bit and clearly reluctant to even tangentially admit that something had been done out of order.

"You are the forensic lead on this, aren't you?" Sherlock questioned, sighing and tilting his head in a move that showed off the length of his neck even with his scarf before looking back at the tedious paperwork as if Anderson had lost all his interesting qualities. The bit of blatant manipulation was calculated to motivate the man to be less sloppy and stricter with his team in the future. Few things motivated an alpha like a challenge from an omega, after all. "That makes it your fault the evidence wasn't properly documented before I was cleared to assess the scene, assuming that is what you are implying happened. Disappointing. Do better next time."

"Excuse you?" Sally Donovan exclaimed as she wrenched open the glass door. It was doubtful she'd heard more than a single word of their conversation.

"We were just discussing procedures," Sherlock assured the woman.

"Procedures? Is that what they call it these days?" she snapped.

He looked back and forth between the two for a moment, taking in all their details. It was a rather strong reaction for something so minor even if she was still irritated by him from their earlier interaction, but... yes, there it was. A hint of the same feminine body spray coming from both of them. Anderson was one of Donovan's alphas. Oh, but he was bonded - the top edge of the mark on his neck faint but still just barely visible above his collar. His omega wasn't renewing the mark, assuming they were intimate at all. No evidence of a new baby to explain why his wife wouldn't be in the mood, though that often swung the other way for many omegas, so trouble in paradise for certain. Now Donovan was involved in their discussion and she was a stickler for rules, so he was likely about to lose her company as well, how sad for him. Sherlock looked back at Anderson, painting what he hoped was an appropriately apologetic look onto his face.

"I don't mean to imply anything formal needs to be done about it. You made it clear you were uncomfortable that your team made a mistake at all, let alone missed important evidence. What will close the case will be the autopsy, which will confirm that the victim was electrocuted while changing a burnt out bulb and caught a terminal case of idiocy because he chose to stand atop a rolling desk chair to do so," Sherlock said, deliberately misunderstanding Donovan and giving Anderson his full attention. "It is not a serious breach of procedure and this is an accidental death. A bit of evidence collection done out of proper order doesn't hurt anyone in this particular instance. Nothing was contaminated as far as I can tell, and it is for the best that such errors, if they must happen, do so when stakes are low. A bit of private chewing out involving whoever it was who was responsible should take care of it, so long as you don't notice a pattern of such incompetence in your team."

"You think you're so much better than us?" Donovan goaded him.

"Isn't he a forensic expert brought in to make sure nothing gets missed when we need to close a PR mess fast?" Anderson asked, a bit confused by the hostility. "It is his job to ride my ass."

"Oh, is that how it is?" Donovan's smile was all teeth. "He's some upper-class student who got strings pulled so he could play cop and double check lab results. I'd be surprised he knows anything practical."

"I've had twice the training you have both as a detective and a forensics expert," Sherlock snarled, jumping up from the bench to tower over her. "Doctoral students, by definition, have already mastered the academics of their field and seek to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. They must be working in their fields, not in a classroom, which is exactly what I am doing. I am no child at play. As valuable as your particular expertise and experience in the field is, assuming you ever remember to engage your brain, I have also had plenty of field experience..."

"Tracking down stray cats," Donovan spoke under her breath. Sherlock continued as if she hadn't.

"...solving minor crimes as a private detective before I received my degree. Furthermore, especially considering the events of this morning, I find the implication that I'm trying to steal your bedmate insulting, unprofessional, and in extremely poor taste." He snatched up the clipboard from where it had fallen and turned to stalk off in a huff. While Donovan stammered dumbly over how Sherlock could possibly know who she was shagging, Anderson surged forward and caught his elbow.

"I don't know what has the two of you at each other's throats, but you smell a bit like... fear and boredom." The statement was made into a concerned question by the rising tone at the end. "Hard to tell through all the neutralizer."

"I demand you unhand me immediately," Sherlock growled through clenched teeth.

"Well, fuck you too then," Anderson scoffed.

"That is well outside the realm of the possible, adulterers aren't my type," Sherlock said softly, his deep baritone voice carrying easily in the quiet room before he thrust out into the open courtyard where the body was finally being loaded into an ambulance.

Sherlock found Lestrade leaning against a patrol car, explaining the autistic gardener and why they thought that this was an accidental death to whoever was on the other end of the radio. He tossed the nearly-complete paperwork on the seat of the car, stated emphatically that he could not work with hormonal idiots too absorbed in inter-office affairs to focus on their jobs, and took a cab back to his flat to hunt down something that smelled like John.


End file.
